RNC 2008: Watching John McCain After Washing Teargas From My Hair

After my little masquerade...

...as a McDonalds customer to avoid getting swept up in the broad police dragnet, I made my way up University in the direction of the campus...walking, because my bike was still chained to a grate around a young tree at Mears Park...and I found my way to a high class Asian bar. The manager of the bar not only allowed me to plug in my video camera, but actually fetched a chair for my equipment.

My exposure to chemical agents on September 4 wasn't as bad as September 2. I went in the bathroom of the bar and managed to wet my hair, which seemed to help. For some reason the chemical agent was mostly in my hair, not my clothing, but there wasn't much of it. This brief video I shot shows some of the chaos, click here.

I hadn't seen so much police violence since Seattle in 1999. I tried to think of a good "theme drink" to commemorate the night, and finally settled on a Bloody Mary.

Some other protester types were in the bar, two or three of them. We convinced the bartender to change the channel from a (college?) football game to "news," which turned out to be John McCain's acceptance speech.

I watched the speech--not very interested--until a protester broke in. It was a young man wearing a black shirt which said something like "Iraqi Veterans Against The War." Suddenly, it seemed like the energy of the protest I'd bailed from was not detained, beaten to the asphalt, handcuffed...it had somehow seeped through the black leather gloves of the police, made its way toward XCel through sewers and utility tunnels, used unknown artifices to get through momentary access points...and now it was inside XCel Energy Center, shouting its objection to the endless war in Iraq.

McCain said something about ignoring "the ground noise and the static."

I finished up my Bloody Mary, ate a handful of hazel nuts from the "bar fixings" to give myself energy, and began the long trudge to where I'd left my vehicle parked in the University District.