Cleveland
“So the guy in the Chicago newspaper wrote that if anything goes wrong with the Republican convention that Cleveland will once again be referred to as the ‘mistake on the lake,'” he said. “I wanted to write an angry letter about it, but my wife talked me out of it.”
I don’t know who this guy is, except that he spent a considerable amount of time trying to help me get to the right place on the Cleveland transit system. He was wearing an embroidered polo shirt announcing he was a Republican National Convention volunteer. As the would-be-letter-to-the-editor-writer explained to me, “Cleveland’s come so far from what it was.” People in Cleveland really are anxious for the opportunity to show off their city.
And they’ll be damned if protesters are going to ruin it for everybody.
There’s been a big question heading into the RNC: Just how bad will the protests be? Several Trump rallies have erupted into violence already, and the cops are clearly concerned. The head of the Cleveland police union is so worried about violence, he publicly begged Ohio governor John Kaisich to suspend the state’s open carry laws for firearms. “I don’t care if it’s constitutional or not at this point,” Stephen Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, told CNN. “They can fight about it after the RNC or they can lift it after the RNC, but I want him to absolutely outlaw open-carry in Cuyahoga County until this RNC is over.”
But upon entering downtown Cleveland, the place is anything but a war zone. The security may be tight, but there’s still the carnival-like atmosphere one expects of a convention. En route to the convention center, there’s a man standing in the crosswalk wearing a red, white, and blue Uncle Sam hat, holding a blow-up doll with a moppy blond Trump wig on it. He’s holding a sign that reads, “little hands, small mind = big a—hole.”
Still, in Cleveland’s Public Square, just outside the RNC convention, the scene is decidedly subdued. There are two college-aged girls holding up “Black Lives Matter” signs, but the real action is from a bunch of Westboro Baptist-lite street preachers are attracting most of the convention. They’re holding up a sign condemning “metal-heads,” “cigarette suckers,” “gangster rappers,” and “immodest women,” among others. And while their related thoughts on Islam and homosexuality have attracted quite a bit of attention, this is pretty much the opposite of the fierce anti-Trump protests that were promised.
Elsewhere in Public Square, an earnest young man is trying to convince reporters to hang around for an appearance by the leaders of a Super PAC known as Patriotic Millionaires who are going to talk about the need for campaign finance reform, which is an important I’m so bored by this supposed pitch I can’t finish typing the sentence.
Instead, the real protest is going on six miles away from the RNC. “Prophets of Rage,” a rock supergroup comprised of the members of Rage Against the Machine and the aforementioned “gangster rappers” (including Chuck D of Public Enemy), are performing. Afterwards there’s a “March to End Poverty.” There are lots of tweets and Facebook posts and social media about this event. Still, the proximity to the actual action is lacking.
And so Prophets of Rage make an appearance in Public Square a few hours later. Unlike the actual live music performance, this one is a canned for the benefit of reporters. Chuck D raps to a boombox somewhere, while the rest of the band pretends to groove along. This ends in a half-assed version of Rage Against the Machine’s minor hit from the 90s, “Killing in the Name Of,” for the benefit of the assembled media. After it ends with a whimper, I leap across the landscaped planter boxes in Public Square to ask Rage Against the Machine’s guitarist Tom Morello a question that’s been bothering me for almost two decades.
“Killing in the Name Of” culminates with a repetitive chorus that never fails to get crowds to sing along—crowds inevitably end up chanting “f—ck you I won’t do what you tell me” over and over as the song ends. And so finally presented with the opportunity, I ask Morrello “Are you aware of the irony of asking a crowd to chant in unison ‘f—ck you I won’t do what you tell me’?” (Via Monty Python, here’s a good illustration of why this lyric has always particularly bothered me.)
To his credit, the Harvard-educated Morello laughs uproariously when I ask the question. “It sounds like solidarity to me,” he says. “It may not sound good to you, but it sure sounds good to me.”
Maybe so, but Prophets of Rage didn’t exactly bring the rage. In fact, considering it’s the first day of the RNC convention the protests are decidedly tame. At the Republican convention in 2008, I ended up downwind from the tear gas the cops released on protesters. In 2004, the RNC protests were so legendary that Hollywood made a vainglorious movie with Rosario Dawson to commemorate them. This year, when Donald Trump is about to accept the nomination—who is a far bigger alleged threat to the republic than McCain or Romney—and while the week is isn’t over, so far the results are meh.
To some extent, that’s a real tribute to the city of Cleveland. Yes, security is tight, but in Public Square, there’s still room for protests if that’s what you feel you need to do. And there’s always the possibility that as the convention goes on the protests could get ugly.
In the meantime, if you’re in town for the convention, the local cops and other Cleveland residents are all too happy to stop you on the street and help you with everything from directions to restaurant recommendations. The RNC is the best chance they’ve had to show off their city in a great while. They have a beautiful city on the lake, and they’ve come too far to let protesters ruin it for everyone.
