The Texas Observer

Photo by Dave McNeely

“You know,” she said after we met him. “That young man could be President some day.”

“What?” I said. “Are you crazy? Not in our lifetimes.” We both knew what I meant. After all, that young man was black. And she and I had both grown up white and liberal in a segregated Houston with “Colored” restrooms, “Whites Only” water fountains, and lily-white lunch counters. In the mid-1960s we had both worked on The Houston Chronicle, where there were a grand total of two black faces in the newsroom, and where we had to plead with and cajole our editors to let us do a long story on poverty in the city. There wasn’t much coverage of the black community back then that didn’t involve crime.

She was Molly Ivins, my dear friend of 45 years before she died in 2007, having had an illustrious career as a reporter, editor of The Texas Observer, and widely syndicated columnist.

“That young man” was Barack Obama. The occasion was the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, where Obama had given the keynote address.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Molly should have said to me.

We both saw stardom in that young man. But Molly saw more. Molly saw a time when the United States of America could put aside racial division and elect a black person President.

I fear I still saw those “Colored” and “Whites Only” signs, the fire hoses and police dogs, and Nixon’s “Southern strategy.”

Well, it did happen in my lifetime. Sadly, not in Molly’s.

Looking at this picture taken by our old friend Dave McNeely (the veteran reporter who was there with us in those Houston Chronicle days), I thought about that night in Boston a little over four years ago. I thought about Molly’s hopeful words.

How she would have loved last night. How she would have loved to hear: “President-Elect Barack Obama.”

Ken Bunting, another old friend who’s now associate publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said of Molly by email this morning, “I’m not much of a believer, but I think our friend is looking down and smiling right along with Barack’s grandma.”

You know, I think he is right.

In 1992 the radical group ACT UP marched on George H. W. Bush’s GOP convention in Houston. It ended in mayhem, with Houston’s irate cops violently dispersing the protesters. It was an ugly scene. Mobs of police chased and struck AIDS activists who had staged a die-in just feet from cops on horseback. ACT UP burnt police barricades and generally pushed nonviolent protest to its logical limits. Still, the GOP ignored them.

Back then the relatively new idea of creating a “free-speech zone” far from the convention hall was just paying dividends, collecting the disgruntled and all their issues in one, dismal, fenced-off park or parking lot and calling it accommodation. Nowadays the “freedom cage” is the rule. Even the Chinese recently used the tactic. But some smart protesters are violating the rules to make a point.

In Denver, protest has been under control, to put it mildly. But, with a little help from the band Rage Against the Machine and Tent State, a protest organization called Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) yesterday made a difference and got some attention — for a little while at least.

A group of uniformed veterans led the march from an outdoor concert at the Denver Coliseum — a long way away from Lower Downtown Denver (”Lo-Do”), where the Pepsi Center and most delegations’ hotels are located. The band and concertgoers reportedly followed the veterans to a spot near 7th Street, just outside the convention hall. IVAW claims the crowd numbered 10,000; the Denver Post put the number at 3,000. I’d say it was more than 3,000, but not 10,000.

IVAW demands an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, full benefits for veterans, and reparations for Iraqis — not exactly Obama’s plan. A spokesman for the group and former Marine, Jeff Key, said he wanted to address the convention and wanted acknowledgment from the Democratic nominee.

The leaders of IVAW appeared to back down after police declared over a sound system that marchers must “disperse from 7th Street or prepare to be arrested.” To the relief of both protesters and police, after maybe 30 minutes, the marchers began to retrace their steps.

However, they stopped just around the corner, and again made their demands. According to two reporters and the IVAW site, protest leaders got a response from those inside the convention hall. The details remain obscure and the Obama camp has not commented on the situation as yet, but the veterans’ march of 2008 has all the hallmarks of a smart, successful protest.

It’s a hopeful sign for protesters everywhere.

It’s entirely possible that news might happen today, but it’s less clear who’ll be around to report it, since the order of the day is BarackObama’s much-anticipated speech tonight at Invesco Field. Party people are estimating a 4-hour process — doubtless riddled with snafus — for getting into the stadium, and that’s if James Dobson’s peevish prayer for rain goes unanswered.

Given the tightness of security and the unthinkable prospect of being left out in the parking lot, we’re not even going to try to bring our laptops along.

Then again, being left out might not be the worst thing that could happen. A timing miscalculation last night at the Pepsi Center left one Observer reporter stuck so high in the Pepsi Center’s nosebleed seats — directly behind the stage, no less — that it was simply impossible to hear, never mind see, the evening’s speeches. So we abandoned the interior and went out into the hall and found a big flat-screen TV, maxed out its volume, and settled in on the carpet to watch the feed.

We weren’t the only ones, and we suspect we had a better view than most. From inside the hall, for instance, we never would have seen Texas Congressman Chet Edwards’ unfortunately canned smile, which, we suspect, had more than a little to do with the fact that he didn’t make it past Obama’s VP short-list.

Joe Biden, of course, did, and the sense around the big screen was that he knocked his acceptance speech out of the park. And when Obama unexpectedly joined him, well, the Hall and the hallway both went wild.

Plus, there was one undeniable advantage to our position. Once the speeches were over, as the Pepsi Center emptied to the soft sounds of the traditional closing invocation, we found ourselves almost directly in the flight path of the secret service crews hustling Hillary and Bill Clinton (who’d exceeded high expectations earlier in the evening) out of their box seats and into a waiting catering-staff elevator. Both of them walked within 10 feet of us, turning heads and setting off a flurry of hurried shutter-snapping. They’re shorter in real life than you might think, and have larger heads than you’d expect, as if they had been manufactured specifically to camera-ready specs.

It was as unexpectedly close to this convention’s real deals as we’ve been all week.