The 2000 Democratic National Convention was held in Los Angeles from Monday August 14th through Thursday August 17th. Neither rich nor a capital D Democrat, I was of course unwelcome at the actual convention and related parties, but I didn't mind, because the real action took place outside the convention. And I definitely felt welcome in the streets--albeit not by the LAPD, who were decked out for the occassion their paramilitary finest.

The principle alternatives to the DNC were the protests organized by the D2K alliance and the counter-convention organized by Shadow Conventions led by the enigmatic Arianna Huffington. Tuesday the 15th was the first of my three consecutive days off work and my real first chance to get involved in the protests surrounding it (for what I was doing the 14th, click here) and I was very eager to get downtown to check out the scene. On this particular day the latter event was much more appealing to me. The Shadow Convention organized itself by each day focusing a different issue that the major parties were ignoring. This was the day it took on the War on Drugs--or, as its critics call it, the War on (some) Drugs, since the alcohol, tobacco and pharmacuetical industries aren't targeted by and often benefit from it.

I was initially somewhat skeptical of the Shadow Convention. First, Arianna Huffington is just weird. She used to be on the right, now she's on the left, and she also does channeling. Whatever. Plus, I had this feeling that all it was a cop-out, a safe alternative to actually being in the streets, kind of a Y2K "Virtual Protest." Or, to put it another way, I was afraid that, like the convention it shadowed, it was just another show for the cameras, offering a facade of democratic participation but ultimately meaningless. But I was pleased to discover that my fears were unfounded. It seemed there were a lot of us who split time between the two events. Perhaps the strongest program of the convetion was the powerful series of testimonials on the value of medical marijuana by a panel of users and/or their family members. One of the most powerful came from the wife of Todd McCormick who also invoked the memory of her husband's editor Peter McWilliams , who recently, tragically died at the age of 50 (He was murdered, really...more on that here ). But I think it would be fair to say that the most powerful speaker was the man who was the main attraction for most of us in attendence, Ram Dass. An early pioneer of inner space, Ram Dass spoke on that day not so much in his long-standing role as a psychedelic advocate, but rather more from the perspective of a recent stroke vicitm who has found relief in the medicinal use of cannabis. At the risk of sounding terribly ironic, I have to say that it was very sobering for me to see such an intelligent, well-educated man struggle at time for words. And this despite his use of marijuana, not because of it as our drug warriors would have us believe.

I think at this point it would be interesting to compare the Shadow Convention with the D2K on this issue. Amazingly, given how many rallies and marches there were decrying the number of Americans incarcerated for non-violent "Crimes," the D2K not only never directly addressed the War on (some) Drugs, on the D2K website one of the principles you were asked to adhere to if you attended their demonstration was to abstain from using drugs and alcohol. There are, I'm sure, several reasons for this. The D2K was a coalition of different groups that got together to organize and coordinate the protests and there is an effort by some of the factions on the left to try to distance themselves from the hippie past. Some, I think, don't want to make it easy to marganilize the protesters as freaks. This is well meaning, but misguided. The libertarians, for instance, are marginalized as freaks, and they're clean-cut as hell (mostly). Other groups, old left and authoritarian communist groups, you have to understand that they never liked the idea of people doing whatever they wanted to do in the first place. They just want to be the ones telling us what to do is all. Meet the new boss.... Anyway, to close this part of the discussion, all I want to say is that one of my prized memories will be smoking with a rasta named Lucius in the pen area across from Staples on the last night of the convention. One of the Jesus freaks was calling us sinners and so on; I realize there isn't much to be gained by arguing with such types, but I couldn't resist telling him he needed to re-read Genesis and pay attention the part where man is given every seed bearing herb.

Another interesting thing at the Shadow Convention were the Rapid Response pannels, which each night featured a group of satirists and political commentators viewing and responding to the televised speeches coming from the DNC a few blocks away. I only attended one of these, the night of Ted Kennedy and Bill Bradley's speeches. Michael McKean was the moderator and some of the pannelists were Alexander Cockburn, Paul Krassner and Tommy Smothers. Al Franken was another one, and he really didn't belong there as he shamelessly shilled for the democrats. Alexander Cockburn was so well informed that he simply stopped Franken dead in his tracks everytime he tried to defend Al Gore. I think Franken took it too personally; Cockburn tried to smooth it over a bit, but Franken was really offended. Serves him right, really, I don't care if he did used to be funny.

I wanted to attend the Rapid Response pannel on the last night, Gore's speech had to be excellent fodder, but I decided that it was more important to be outside the Staples Center as the farce inside reached it's creschendo. There was a huge throng of people there and a pretty good funk-ish group named Zebrahead played, and at 8:30 when the assembly permit expiered we marched from the Staples Center to the Twin Towers jail center to show solidarity with the demonstrators that had been arrested and to protest the prison-industrail complex. After we arrived and rallied for a while, the mass of the protesters went to the train station nearby. When we got there me and two of my friends decided to go to Al's Bar, a punk rock club not too far away. I suggested getting a cab to avoid being hassled, but my friends felt we would be ok. Since I wasn't holding or anything, I figured ok. We walk by and comment on a police car that was somewhat hidden and said police car flashes that white light that they use when they pull people over. Just flashes it on and off one time. We continue to walk and the state alleges that at one intersection we jaywalk. It was pretty close, admittedly--we just made or just missed the walk sign, we were certainly close enough that if they weren't out to get us, they wouldn't have bothered. But in any event, four cop cars pull us over, make us go through the hands on our head routine, search our bags and bodies, ask us for id, our names, where we work, do we have tattoos, what is our home #, what is our work #, are we part of any organizations, are we part of a gang and so on. The cop that was interogating my friend Kevin asked him if we were at the demonstration. He said yes. She asked him "What's your cause?" We realized later that the perfect response would've been Brando: "What'd'ya got?" but at the time he came up with a vague response that he was there to check it out (which was true; he's not really a radical, I was the only real radical of the three, I know the other two guys from seeing them at rock clubs). Anyway, a bogus stop, they asked for a lot of information which I'm sure they are going to put in a databse (and maybe tap our phones). While we were stopped, I heard over the police radio they were monitoring who was on the trains & where they got off as well. Welcome to the new, improved police state! My Home Page