Tuesday, August 26, 2008

People Power?

bill rappleye

the price of security

The SWAT forces here are omnipresent, and oppressive.  They deploy en masse for no apparent reason.  Yesterday afternoon, as I was walking downtown, there was a sudden symphony of sirens…three vans, bursting with SWAT teams, led by a patrol car with lights strobing, and followed by a school bus full of more black clad military type defenders with automatic weapons pressed against the windows, raced down the street.  They halted at a corner, the men piled out, and proceeded to walk to positions spread down the street.  There wasn’t a disturbance, and somebody told me they just do this periodically to establish presence. These guys have body armor more elaborate even than the squads that were all over New York and Boston in the last conventions:  all black (good for sitting around in the hot sun, not!), plastic shin and feet guards, elbow pads, helmets, batons, and all sorts of stuff attached to their belts, machine guns.  The armor on their upper bodies is so thick, they look like an evil Michelin tire man.  And you’ll see them in teams of twelve or so, piled onto the running boards, and a rear platform of an extended SUV, just cruising up and down the street.  It kind of puts a damper on the atomosphere here.  There’s are blocks and blocks of walking to get into and out of the Pepsi Center where the convention is being held.  So delegates are kind of dragging in the heat and altitude, and this military presence is inescapable.  Despite the handful of vendors and Uncle Sam impersonators trying out their routines,  it’s not a cheerful celebratory scene of the people’s will in action.  Between the steel barriers and the souped up police, it feels a lot more like prison than freedom.