I took my family to watch democracy in action during the protest march on the RNC yesterday. Nutshell: a peaceful and powerful display of free speech at its most creative was interrupted by a dangerous and annoying group of protest-rebel-wannabees. (I imagine their photos will be featured in an “Xtreme Activism” display sponsored by Red Bull.)

Here’s what I learned:

Downtown St. Paul is huge. Or it must be. How else can I explain being in the middle of it and not see any of the destruction that was going on around us? (Read A Lovely Afternoon Stroll through the Police State of St. Paul, Minnesota and RNC Day One Diary: All roads lead to Kellogg Boulevard.)

I’m not the kind of person who jumps right into the action. On our way to downtown St. Paul we were confused because our bus was not following the special RNC reroute. Then we saw a large group of police officers, in full riot gear, running. In our direction. My husband suggested we jump off the bus there to see what was going on; I declined. Even if we hadn’t had our girls with us, I don’t know that I would have wanted to witness what happened next:

Undercover cops are not fooling anyone. Two undercover cops stepped out of the march and stood beside me to watch the crowds. Overstuffed backpacks, new water bottles, new tennis shoes? My husband said they could be frat boys, but I dared him to find another protestor with wrap-around sunglasses. They took off running after a cell phone call.

I’m not the kind of person to approach celebrities. When we first got off the bus, I saw Noah Kunin (with The Uptake, who provided the best RNC protest coverage) documenting the day with his cell phone. My impulse was to yell, “Go, Uptake!” or to run up and shake his hand. Couldn’t do it.

Jon Stewart is taller than you’d think. No details, see previous re: Noah Kunin.

Twitter has a greater purpose. Tweeting takes on a whole new meaning if you’re spending the day in the middle of chaos. (Read The Revolution will be Twittered at Firedoglake.) After we returned home safely we were glued to s4xton, coldsnaplegal, JasonBarnett, MnIndyLIVE, and PiPress. (And to the live streams coming from The Uptake.) How did I manage without Twitter for so long?

I probably should have anticipated the ironic ending to our day. It had been a very hot day and we ran out of water. On our walk back to the bus stop (futile, as the buses has stopped running), the girls stopped to cool off in this fountain by the Capitol.

And these are the officers who told the kids: You can’t be in the water! Get out! 

Just happy they weren’t in riot gear.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2, 2008 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.