You have to love American political parties’ national conventions, held every four years to nominate their choice for president and vice president. They’re a riot.
And it’s not just the kitschy ambience, defined as it is by the funny hats, the colourful balloons, the idiosyncratic signs, the canned speeches and, my, all that confetti — lending to otherwise historic moments the air of infomercials — that earns them the moniker. There are times in fact when these conventions become a riot in both senses of the word, as old geezers like this columnist will tell you was the fate in 1968 of the Democratic National Convention.
Not this time around though.
This year the DNC gathered on Monday night to anoint Kamala Harris as its candidate for a historic presidency and in effect to deny Donald Trump his much-hoped-for matchup against the hollowed-out Joe Biden, who in a valedictory speech that night addressed delegates relieved that he had finally agreed — only under pressure from party leaders and after unprecedented intraparty upheaval — to “pass the torch”, a speech in which he proudly mapped his legacy, claimed that “I gave my best” to the country and bade his fellow-Americans an emotional farewell.
“Stop Arming Israel”
It was sad — and for some, heartbreaking — to watch this well-meaning, octogenarian but flawed chief executive give his swan song before he disappeared into the nether world inhabited by former presidents. But that didn’t stop several DNC delegates, a few minutes after he took to the podium, from unfurling a banner in the colours of the Palestinian flag that read, “Stop Arming Israel”.
The delegates’ aim, they later told reporters, was to confront their fellow-conventioneers with what they and their party were trying to ignore that night: The ongoing genocide in Gaza, funded by their tax money and enabled by their President.
And, yes, let’s face it, for Joe Biden there was a single issue on which he was resolute, on which he entertained no entreaties, no counter arguments and no cri de coeurs from many, many members of his party (and reportedly even his wife): Support for Israel’s war in Gaza. On that issue, the man just moved full steam ahead, no matter where the path took him — which ended up being genocide.
Perhaps in that nether world, Joe Biden will have time to reflect and then reflect some more on the horrors that he had allowed the Zionist state to wreak on the defenceless people of this little, tormented strip of land.
Meanwhile back to the four-day Democratic National Convention, which was held at the United Center — home to the Chicago Cubs — in Chicago. And where else but Chicago?
Something about Chicago’s DNA
“I give you Chicago”, wrote famed journalist, cultural critic and satirist H.L. Mencken (d. 1956). “It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitlin and spare rib. It is alive from snout to tail”.
In short, Chicago is, like turkey pardoning, corporate greed and denial on matters of race, as American as apple pie. That may or may not be why the Windy City has, since Abraham Lincoln accepted his party’s nomination in 1860, hosted more political conventions than any other in the country — 14 Republican and 12 Democratic.
There’s something about Chicago’s DNA (“I’m from Chicago. I don’t break” once declaimed by Barack Obama) that seems to light the fire in protesters’ blood. Sure, the anger felt by the tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters against President Joe Biden’s war in Gaza, in our time, is as visceral and vehement as that felt by the roughly 10,000 protesters against President Lyndon Johnson’s war in Vietnam in 1968, but expressions of this anger panned out differently.
The chaos visited upon the city 56 years ago, which was mostly the result of a “police riot” — as a government report later dubbed the unrestrained violence used by the men in blue, who had wrestled to the ground and beat bloody not only demonstrators but journalists and passers-by as well — still haunts those who were there, done that, and had their say, as it were, and today are pushing or have already pushed eighty.
By comparison, the protesters this year (who like their counterparts in 1968 espoused the slogan “The streets belong to the people”) marched, as of this writing on Tuesday, the second day of the convention, sans confrontations with the police, save for a few minor, isolated skirmishes.
To claim that you “were there, done that” and “had your say” matters in our time, in a world where we know that we are complicit in that which leaves us indifferent.
Look, just a stone’s throw away from United Center is the Chicago History Museum, which has on view a permanent exhibit of protest art from the late 1960s and early ‘70s, including the art inspired by the soixante huitards of Chicago in 1968. Charles Bathea, the museum director, told WBEZ Chicago on Monday that the pro-Palestinian protests in his city, along with those that erupted on campuses nationwide in April, made the message of the exhibit more relevant.
“I’m hoping that visitors will walk away [from the exhibit] with an understanding of people in the 1960s and 70s, those people who were willing to put their lives, their futures on the line for the issues they believed in”, he said. “I’m hoping also they’ll walk away with the feeling that it is necessary to continue carrying the torch forward, because we still have a long way to go”.
We hear you, brother.
— Fawaz Turki is a noted academic, journalist and author based in Washington DC. He is the author of The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile
