June 2, 2008
Crashing the Hillary Clinton Rally, I Mean, DNC Protests
When a friend emailed to invite me to cover this past weekend's DNC protests, I had blogger visions running through my head of life-size puppets, patchouli and lots and lots of yelling. Sadly, it seems like most of the good stuff happened inside the hotel, where the protesters weren't supposed to be and I didn't try to go. But I've got your boring, ill-attended protest round-up anyway, complete with pictures of as much of the crazy as I bothered trying to document.
Protesters outside the Democratic National Committee meeting in Washington on Saturday. (Megan Carpentier)
I'll admit that I slept in on Saturday morning, seeing no need to try to beat either the Rules Committee members or the protesters to the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. If the number of random news outlets running around trying to find a protester to interview at 11 a.m. is anything to go by, I wasn't the only one. It turns out that most of the protesters went to the park behind the Omni Shoreham, leaving the entrance of the Marriott guarded by a few hold outs and a bunch of press until lunchtime.
Stopping into the McDonald's on Connecticut Ave. for some fries and a much-needed Diet Coke, I found about 20 protesters holed up in there, scarfing lunch before heading back to the Marriott. Two suburban women discussed how Obama was a typical Chicago politician who "had never been poor," while a Florida protester asked everyone in line (with no sense of irony) to budge in front of them because he was so busy. He got steamed at me when I told him no, but my stand seemed to empower the others and he was forced to concede defeat and wait his turn.
Standing by the Metro station with my soda, I listened to a homeless man heckle the protesters on their way up the hill, and eventually joined the throng. It was far from crowded, with a bunch of other picture-taking gawkers filling out the crowd. Almost all of them were either wearing or carrying Hillary Clinton gear. While they dutifully performed their call-and-response ("50 states, not 48!"), the thing that really got them excited was the Hillary-mobile, which would've earned a standing ovation if everyone hadn't already been standing.
All in all, there weren't but a couple of hundred, mostly older protesters there when I left, shouting and waving for the press, the cops and the taxi drivers while the Committee members stayed safely underground. On the scale of protests worth watching, this rated less interesting than a good World Bank protest and more interesting than a taxi driver protest. But check out the pictures yourself!
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Where were these people back in August when this decision was acutally made.
They are turning me into a misogynistic homophobe.
What do these protestors want? Let me guess… the key of Orthanc? Or perhaps the keys of Barad Dûr itself? Along with the Crowns of the Seven Kings and the Rods of the Five Wizards! You cannot think that this shrill harridan from the North will ever sit upon the throne of Gondor. This exiled wife of a chubby chaser, crept from the shadows, will never be crowned King. Ask DC Voting Rights advocates: the DNC does not hesitate to sacrifice those who are closest to them... those they professes to love.
Tell me, what words of comfort did you give the Hillary Moms before you sent them to their doom? The path that you have set them on can only lead to death.
What a bunch of numnahs.
One more reason I'm happy to be a Republican!
maybe you should blame your state politicians (or whoever was responsible) for moving up the primary illegally.
Is anyone else getting sick and tired of hearing Florida voters whine???
let's see, the DNC said "hold your primaries early and we will not seat your delegates", the states held the primaries anyway. the DNC is the governing body, it made laid out the terms, the terms were ignored by the states, the DNC followed through. what part of "we won't seat your delegates if you move your primaries up" did they not understand? desperate power hungry crybabies are not fit to govern, just look at W.
vote bob barr if you're angry. it's not throwing away your vote, i promise ;)
Guy Incognito made me LOL.
what about ralph nader?
I saw some of these folks studying for the protest.
i'm guessing most of these people are scared to death of having a black president.
Not as scared as they'd be of having another dipshit republican..
But they're saying they would vote McCain before Obama.
then they're not real democrats anyway.
They're probably protesting Hillary for happily agreeing back in December that "Michigan and Florida don't count," right? Yeah I bet they're really sticking it to Hillary right now
I love how when some Democrat does something at least at little bit out of line with the "norm" someone throws out that they are not "real" Democrats anyway. The Republicans do the same thing.
Lets get something straight.
The people in the party define who and what the party is composed of and what are its political stands.
All these white cracker MF's who wont vote for Obama because he is black are the same MFs who didn't want blacks anywhere but in the back of the bus and in separate classrooms. For years the Democratic Party has slung the mud of Racism against the Republicans, and rightfully so, but now it once again raises its ugly head in the Klan, ohh sorry Sen. Byrd, I meant party of its birth.
Hilary and her supporters are just pissed off that she isn't getting what she felt she was entitled to receive automatically. Well, guess what? That's not the way it works here. The Democratic Party has taken African Americans for granted for years and now that an African American Male is threatening their Golden Women they are pissed.
Its time for someone with a name other then Bush or Clinton to run this country. The Presidency isn't a damn relay handed off from one family to another.
Amen, will585.
Why would you write an entire article about how far from newsworthy an event was? If it's not a protest worth reporting on, it's not a protest worth reporting on. "Sorry, I'm not going to say anything interesting here, but I have to write it anyway because I dragged myself to Woodley Park on Saturday" doesn't really cut it.