Wherein Dave begins to question his identity and sanity

The theme for Thursday was disillusionment and exhaustion.  I woke up with an inflamed right eye and painful stomach cramps, but I didn't have much time to dwell on the weird physical problems as I rushed to the RNC Welcoming Committee's press conference.

When it became clear that the committee wasn't media savvy and would rather ramble than answer questions, I left the tedium to the real journalists and returned to the capitol.

below: Elliot Hughes, 19, talks to the press about being beaten by police in his cell after being arrested.

Back at the capitol, an anti-war rally of mostly high school students formed.  They quickly and peacefully marched to Harriet Island because a more confrontational group of protesters planned on marching later in the afternoon.

At the capitol, a different sort of group started gathering.  The hippie kids, black bloc anarchist types, and other more vocal protesters that I'd seen earlier in the week were back.  There was a weird tension in the air as dozens of mounted and riot police gathered around the perimeter of the park and singers and announcers riled up the crowd for a march to the Xcel Enery Center.

Inside the crowd, I noticed at least half a dozen undercover agents spying on the protesters.  Many were easy to spot – middle-aged, thick necks, tacky sunglasses, spotless bandanas.  Almost all wore backpacks and khakis in a crude attempt at blending in.  I even saw one scruffy agent carrying a skateboard around without ever using it.

I first started noticing these agents after walking away from the Poor People's March, where I ran into a group of four of these serious guys.  When I walked behind them, they became uncomfortable and suspiciously stopped, waiting for me to pass them.  I walked in front of them for a while before playing their game by stopping and pretending to look around.  They stopped and awkwardly leaned against the wall of a building, never saying a word.  When I started again and passed them, they said, "ok, let's go" and continued following me.

After that surreal encounter, I became intensely aware of their kind lurking in the crowds.  I saw one of those four guys the next day wearing an awful wig.  In fact, the costumes became more laughable as the week wore on.

In retrospect, I should've photographed them, but I didn't because whenever I looked in their eyes, I received a deathly serious gaze.  I don't know where they came from, but they definitely weren't humble Minnesotans.

I did, however, confront a pair of undercover agents at the rally on Thursday.  One wore a ratty wig (I'd seen him the day before, bald) and the other wore a fake septum ring (I think I can say that on some authority).  After one asked me the time, I told him and then said, "You guys don't really blend in."

"What?"

"You're cops, right?"  There was an uneasiness in his eyes as he hesitated to respond.  "No," he said with derision, "are you?"

"No," I said.  The body-building, fake-septum-pierced dude scoffed, "Well, I'm offended that you think that!"

"Oh, I'm sorry for offending you," I said while walking away.  The pair of badly disguised spies then left the park, but I knew that several of their comrades remained, slinking around, wearing anarchist halloween costumes.

The police suddenly swooped into the park and arrested a couple.  A line of riot police plowed through the crowd, and mounted cops raced to the scene to prevent a riot as the police carted the two away.  Nobody seemed to know what had just happened, but I overheard a TV reporter say that the man was wanted for throwing bricks at windows on Monday.

At 5pm, the police rolled in on their command golf cart and proclaimed that the protesters' permit had expired.  There was some confusion about whether it actually expired at 5pm or what, but regardless, that was the cue for everyone to start marching.

After talking to the police, this "peace team" member began warning all of the marchers.

"We think you're going to be hurt,"  he repeated, but nobody listened.

Because the protesters were immediately blocked on one street (Cedar St.), they headed for the nearest bridge, John Ireland Blvd.

Blocked on one side of the bridge, the protesters milled around for an hour before police made a dispersal order at 6pm.  Just as it looked like the tear gas was coming out, the marchers headed off the bridge in the opposite direction.  The only problem for the police was that instead of going northwest as demanded, the protesters sprinted across the park back to Cedar St, which was still blocked by riot cops.

Several protesters were arrested staging a sit-in at the blockade, while the rest hung around for another hour or so.  I decided that the convention center would be the better place to hang out if anything else were to happen that night.  Most roads into downtown were blocked, but I found a way south a few blocks from where people were massing.

It turns out there wasn't much happening at all outside the convention center...

I felt thoroughly disillusioned by the time McCain spoke.  Even though the St.Paul police and mayor have claimed success against dangerous, organized anarchists, it was plain to see that the protesters were out-matched at almost every turn.  Instead of marching to the convention center and having their voices heard, they spent hours milling around while the police surrounded them, gassed them, and arrested hundreds of them far from the convention.

I had lost the energy to photograph and took on a thousand-yard stare.  Young Republican delegates and hangers-on left the convention center and took smiling photos against a backdrop of a line of riot police.  The lockdown of the city and helicopters buzzing overhead must've been a curious spectacle to them, but they were blissfully unaware of the hundreds of people trying and failing to have their voices heard a mile away.

Dejectedly, I wandered around Rice Park, which was relatively quiet.  I watched more undercover agents spying on a group of young kids wearing black.  To me, they were obviously not the same crew that I had seen protesting before, but the police profiling knows no bounds.  The kids probably had no idea that four agents were watching them joke around and then followed them when they left the area.

The first stop I made in Minneapolis after arriving was the Seward Cafe, recommended to me by Antonio because of their "gutterpunk" culture.  I naively tried chatting with the waitstaff about the RNC.  Saying I came from Boston intending to document the outside of the convention, I wanted to know how people felt about the convention and outsiders coming into their neighborhood.  The staff who did talk to me, including the most striking girl I met in the Twin Cities, were skeptical of me and tried to suss me out.  They didn't want to talk about the RNC at all except to say that they wanted it all to go away.  I took one photo of the kitchen and walked around, looking at the postings on their wall.  When I was out of view, I overheard the staff asking about me, "who was that?"  And when I headed for the door, one of them stopped me and asked me to delete the photo because of the "security culture."  (on principal, I won't delete a photo even if someone asks, but the Seward folks have nothing to worry about because it was a lousy picture, anyway)  I walked away genuinely surprised at their paranoia and standoffishness, but I learned that it was the norm among the anarchist/anti-cap/hippie folks of the area.

During the protests, those kids would demand not to have their picture taken.  They were quite hostile: "I do not consent to having my picture taken!"  It seems they were unaware that photography in public does not require consent.

I began to wonder who I was to these people.  Protesters knew that I was not one of them, despite looking scruffy and smelling bad.  At times I think they must've thought I was a cop (I thought it odd when one black bloc kid approached me in a crowd asking for "a dollar for the bus."  Is that some way of fishing out undercover cops?), while other times people thought I was a journalist.  Journalists knew I wasn't one of them because of my lack of press pass and button-down shirt, which meant I was invisible to their eyes.  And cops probably thought I was a protester because I fit the profile if you squint enough.   While standing on a street corner, one police volunteer tried to debate me on the legality of income tax because he assumed I agree with everything that every protester says.

With these thoughts and observations in mind, I began to feel paranoid, myself.  I thought back to the interactions I had had with people:  the gonzo-tourist photographer with whom I had run into and talked several times (I later saw him sitting near some undercover agents); the two friendly townie guys who asked me about myself as they talked about strip clubs and sports bars (they spent a long time hanging out in Rice Park after we parted ways.  Were they cops?  nah...); and finally, this odd character below.

While I sat outside Rice Park, exhausted and malnourished, this strange guy approached me, and we started to talk.  He struck me as a cross between Mr.Magoo and Vincent Price, but from Fargo, North Dakota.  He seemed drunk but smelled like he was drinking soap.  He didn't believe that I had come from Boston and thought there must be some mystery to me.  When he said, "I know it!  You're policia!" I denied it, but he asked to see my license to prove it.  After I showed him, he was flabbergasted. "Oh, I was wrong.  How could that be? But there is something about you that you're not telling.  What can it be?" 

I left the old man in the park to think about that riddle.  At the same time, a week of roaming on my own and observing everybody intensely had lead me to wonder just who the hell I am.  After another solitary 1,300 mile drive home, I'm still trying to figure that one out.