Page 18 • Thursday, September 9, 2004
Features
The Pendulum
ieUBLlCAIS
. CONVKNTION
PROTESTING
the RNC
An Elon alum shares his experience
as a protester outside the convention
Jack Duval
CiUest reporter
On August 29, at 12 p.m., a half million
people gathered between 15th and 22nd Street
in lower Manhattan to protest George W. Bush
and the Republican National Convention.
They converged toward Seventh Avenue from
Ninth on the West Side and Fifth on the east
and formed a line over two miles long at its
peak as they marched past Madison Square
Garden, the temporary Republican bastion.
I was with them.
I.ikc 500,(XX) notes of a raucous party tune,
Americans from all over the country formed a
slow moving protest song, shuffling and shout
ing its way up Seventh Avenue. The human
verse/chorus/verse held variations from irre
sistible drum line rhythms to delicate parodies
set to traditional songs, to raw fist-in-the-air
call and response anthems.
Despite coming from seemingly infinite
world views, 500,(X)0 voices were in emotion
al harmony - equally upbeat at the prospect of
so many like-minded citizcns gathered togeth
er and fiercely on key with the anti-Bush mes
sage.
Let’s listen.
‘‘kverywherc / hear the sound of marchirf'
chargin’feet. boy!”
Ttxlay, those feet were propped up on the
metal runners of a chrome wheelchair and
belonged to a frail woman with paper-thin
skin. Though her white hair w;us disheveled
and her he;id hung to the side, her knobby fin
gers unwaveringly held a poster reading: “97
years old and outraged.”
In front of us was a group of middle-aged
patriots, dre.ssed up like Paul Revere with
three-ix)int hats and white frilly shirts with
oversized cuffs playing flutes and drums.
They seemed to have practiced and played tra
ditional songs. Lyrics were handed out on
small slips of paper. (I saw a copy crumpled
up in those knobby fingers.)
If you go talkin ’ to people of Chairman
Mao, you're not gonna make it with anyone
anyhow."
Some things never change. The
Communists for Violent Revolution were up
ahead and to the left, dressed like NVA regu
lars and carrying red flags with yellow cres
cent moons and stars. They were mostly
young Indian girls, and every now and then
one would jump up and shout something about
the revolution, but it never rhymed, and this,
after all, is New York City, where style counts.
They got no play.
"Five to one, baby, one in five. No one here
gets out alive."
Statistics were in vogue, here are two; 971
U.S. soldiers dead; 13,714 Iraqi’s dead. Phone
numbers were written on the arms of many
people - contacts to legal defense groups and
family members who knew their names and
blood types.
Everywhere is freaks and hairies, dykes
and fairies, tell me where is .sanity?"
The freaks were out, all right; ydung par
ents holding their children’s hands, fathers car-
lying their daughters on their shoulders, moth
ers pushing sleeping babies in strollers, old
women carrying poodles, and the occasional
pregnant protester, waddling forward.
"Well I came upon a child of God, he was
walkin'along the road, ami I asked him: tell
me where are you goin'and this he told me."
All of God’s children were present, in the
full colored splendor of youth. I saw one
standing on a green port-o-john, with cutoff
More t/ianha/f a m,7//on peon/e h KRT Campus
Madison Square Garden in New St '^epub/zcan National Convention at
crowd that held signs and chanted for several ^
carnouflage shorts, a black sports ton t-,tt
and wraparound shades, her hands on hor h ' Bush,” and the lewdly humorous
o serving the streets like she owned ®f Evil” with the administrations
And she did. b.Pnn.„ them, faces pained into backsides.
And she did, because stretched TS
were 500.(XX) Americans with Ik
dreadlocks, piercings, tattoos h
clothes and a cnimpW un wn
she didn’t sing. Out loud. ^ *’Ong
“And the words of the nrontu.t.
on the subway walls an,!,
«v nails and tenement halh "
Homemade posters mostly b 2f
superimposed on Munch’s "Thrf
Freedom Fries” and “Got n.
ten under renderings of the f
from Abu Ghraib, Mr T and
posing rhetorical questions ^
Of
^ind the co.st of freedom, buried in
mnrnd."
Around 24th Street a parade within the
purade of flag-drap>ed coffins was silently cur
ried through the crowd. One thousand, all told-
The coda is that the music of 500.000 stiuls
cannot be ignored, it cannot be mitigated or
explained away. Hie ferocity of its peaceful
ness Will stand as a testiunent to its power. I
ope it is the first chord of the music that will
calm the savage beast our county' hxs become.
Thirty-four and outraged.
Contact Jack Duval at pendulum@elon.edu
or 278-7247.