Hanging out ... against convention

My son told me he is planning to demonstrate at the Republican convention in New York City in August. “Demonstrate” is not the word he used. He is planning to meet up with some friends who are planning to demonstrate. “Hanging out” is what he called it. I decided it was time to give him some perspective on American politics from a former teenager.

1968, 1972, 1980...2000, 2004. These dates are punctuations in the life of an American citizen. In the worst of times, the knowledge that our government can be revolutionized every four years can keep us sane and, usually, peaceful.

Listening to last week’s Democratic convention, I recalled some of those punctuations in my life. I find it hard to believe only four years have passed since we huddled around a small campfire near our mountaintop bungalow listening to Al Gore and Caroline Kennedy, one wooden, the other passionate, both hopeful and sincere.

What has happened in those four years could fill a lifetime, but not a happy one.

I remember the convention of 1960 as a child remembers important events—the white faux-straw boaters with the Kennedy hatbands and balloons everywhere. To an eight-year-old, it looked like the best birthday party ever. When JFK’s inauguration took place on my mother’s birthday, I was sure American presidential politics was about joyous celebration.

By 1964, those politics didn’t seem so joyous. President Kennedy’s funeral had been my introduction to the ceremony of loss.

Last week, NPR replayed Walter Cronkite’s reporting from the 1968 Democratic National Convention. A barely composed journalist reported watching Chicago’s Finest attack protesters en masse, ruthlessly clubbing them, in a shameful display of might over right.

I didn’t go to Chicago in 1968, as many of my generation did. That was a bitter year. The initial joy of Johnson’s demurral of a second term, which we saw as a victory in the battle against the Vietnam War, gave way to the grief of losing Martin and Bobby.

All hell broke loose that year. In May, we were tear-gassed in front of the Justice Department building in Washington, D.C. as we tried to get to Union Station after an antiwar demonstration. It was my 16th birthday.

Later, I remember waking in the middle of the night of the California primary to hear Bobby Kennedy being shot over the crackling reception of my bedside radio. It seemed like a gruesome radio play to me then. I heard “Get the gun, Rafer,” the sounds of scuffling, and the news later that morning from Sandy Vanocur, that he was dead. Martin Luther King was freshly buried and we had not yet come close to feeling the deep, generation-long void of his loss, when Bobby was laid to rest.

Since I can remember, my family has been politically active and nonviolent. We vote in every election, even off-year school board elections. Demonstrating peacefully against policies we abhor is second-nature to us. I met my husband at a Democratic Party fundraiser in 1982. He was a District Leader in Manhattan for 18 years.

So my son’s casual interest in the Republican convention that is being held in his hometown is not surprising. But this is a new world with new rules. Demonstrators are not the only ones who have learned from the past. Protesters are caged now and kept away from the media who would expose their cause. News helicopters are banned from the air space above demonstrations because it is the best way to keep their numbers from being estimated independently. Police horses are used to herd citizens of every age and infirmity away from “sensitive” locations. Tactics such as channeling demonstrators down separate avenues are effective in diluting the appearance of mass, even from the protesters themselves.

I have great faith in the New York City Police Department. But the National Guard, an army of weekend soldiers under dubious leadership, was the cause of another national disgrace in my lifetime. The words “Kent State” stirred only a vague recollection in my son’s mind. But the scene of dead students, dead at the hands of fellow patriots under orders, is still vivid in my memory.

At least in 1969, the media was watching.

My son will make his own decision about August. But he told me to tell his friends exactly what I told him. “Just the way you told me, Mom,” he said.

Because just “hanging out,” I fear, is not an option.