Pubdate: Wed, 16 Aug 2000
Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Copyright: 2000 Detroit Free Press
Contact:  http://www.freep.com/
Forum: http://www.freep.com/webx/cgi-bin/WebX
Author: Dawson Bell, staff writer
Bookmark: MAP's link to shadow convention items: 
http://www.mapinc.org/shadow.htm
Note: Shadow Convention websites: http://www.drugpolicy.org/ 
http://www.shadowconventions.com/

DEMOCRATS AREN'T ONLY CONVENTION IN TOWN

LOS ANGELES -- This city is too big and too busy -- not to mention too 
weird -- for a single convention.

So it's probably a good thing it's having more than one.

In case you missed it -- which is highly likely given the scant national 
coverage -- Los Angeles this week is home to several ancillary events. We 
have the Homeless Convention, located, oddly, at a housing development for 
the homeless called Dome City. And the Shadow Convention, a gathering of 
unaligned malcontents led by Republican defector and celebrity pundit 
Arianna Huffington. And hordes of mostly young people participating in 
D2KLA, a sort of anti-convention near the Staples Center.

On Monday evening, the street outside a civic building called Patriotic 
Hall, about five blocks south of the Staples Center, was blocked off to 
traffic. But a growing cluster of shadowy conventioneers spilled over into 
the street.

A few, carrying clipboards and walkie-talkies, scurried in and out. What's 
going on?

Bomb scare was the report from a well-mannered young man named Donald, who 
was passing out literature for Los Angeles mayoral candidate Francis 
DellaVechhia ("No political parties. No lobbyists. No polling").

Panic and precaution were not the watchwords for this bomb scare, however. 
It was phoned in two hours earlier; the police were inside rooting around. 
But it was only now that the building was being cleared.

On a screeching makeshift sound system mounted aboard their media truck, 
the Shadow conventioneers attempted to carry on outside. "They're not going 
to shut us down!" the audience was told, It was not clear who the "they" were.

Huffington took the microphone to announce that the program will continue 
"as if nothing has happened," a perhaps unintentionally precise description 
of how the Shadow Convention is faring.

Paradoxically, this might have been the one moment so far in which 
something actually was happening. As novelist Gore Vidal is introduced, and 
conventioneers press further into the street, about 100 police officers in 
riot gear materialized 50 feet away. They wanted the street cleared.

Vidal glanced over his shoulder and proclaimed: "It reminds me of Chicago 
in 1968. That was a merry time."

His audience, however, became less merry as the police deployed into riot 
stick-ready formation. Heated negotiations ensued. A stream of officers, in 
similar gear, spilled out of Patriotic Hall.

Later, the Shadow Convention was once again inside addressing its signature 
issues of campaign finance and corporate greed. Sadly, from the point of 
view of its publicist, the briefly tense standoff was overshadowed, so to 
speak, by something approximating real civil disobedience at the Staples 
Center.

Police and local news organizations report that force was required to break 
up a demonstration outside the Democratic National Convention. An element 
of the D2KLA crowd loosely described as the anarchists had been flinging 
bottles and concrete over the barrier around the center. A few tried to 
climb the fence.

The spirit of the crowd is fueled by an influx of attendees from a nearby 
outdoor concert given by Rage Against the Machine.

Using pepper spray, rubber bullets and horses, police cleared the area.

An hour later, departing rioters mingled with conventioneers. About one in 
three from both sides was talking on a cell phone. One young caller in 
dreadlocks described the action: "You oughta smell that gas. It's just like 
Raid," the bug spray.

The Democrats seem secure, as they should be. The departing president who 
addressed them promised early in his first term to put 100,000 new cops on 
the street; about half of them appear to be providing security.

Both groups are triumphal, and entirely disconnected.

Later, local news reports on the convention featured 30-second clips of the 
Clinton speech, 3 minutes on the riot and breathless updates at every break 
on the progress of the night's main event party at Paramount Studios, at 
which Clinton was expected.

Not a word on the Shadow Convention.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart