"Without reading, you don't have access to freedom"

     There were actually some very positive things going on at the Republican National Convention, so long as you kept your attention away from what was happening inside Quicken Loans Arena.           

     CLEVELAND—Even in a Public Square jammed with colorful advocates of every cause, both marginal and mainstream, Jonathan Harris stood out. 
     "I'm spreading the love of reading," said the branch manager of the Aurora Memorial Public Library in Portage County, whose jerry-rigged bookmobile—a milk crate filled with paperbacks strapped to the back of his bike—was simple yet effective.
     No sooner had Harris paused before the Terminal Tower when M'Ryah Holmes, 11, and her sister Rameerah, 10, were upon him, eagerly looking through his selection, being given away to anyone who would take them.
     Why do they like to read?

Mavis Holmes with daughters M'Ryah, (left) and Rameerah.

     "They don't have no choice," said their mother, Mavis Holmes, with a steely inflection that suggested much get-your-butt-in-that-chair-and-read guidance on her part.
    Why is reading important?
     "The reason it's very important is for them to understand their civil rights," said Holmes, an assistant instructor at a high school. "To get an education and understand the process. You can't have access to freedom without being literate. Without reading, you don't have access to freedom."
     An hour later I ran into Harris in the park next to Public Square, when he stopped his bike for Muireall Brown, 19, of Florida.
     "Do you have anything?" she asked.
     "What do you like to read?" asked Harris. His white baseball cap declared "Make America Read Again" and Babar the elephant peeked out from the tattoo on his right bicep. Harris has been working in libraries since he was 16—his father Mike was also a librarian. 
     "I like a lot of historical-fiction," Brown said.
     This is kind of a busman's holiday for him—taking off work as a librarian to peddle a bike around, working as a librarian. Why?
     "It gives me a chance to talk about reading, about libraries, about funding.
     Brown didn't find a book she liked. But a fellow medic—she was at the convention with Rust Belt Medics, tending to cases of sunburn and dehydration among the protesters—did find a book to his liking.
    "The Time Machine by H.G. Wells," said Taylor Morris, 26, of Atlanta. "I almost took the prequel to Dune that Frank Herbert's son wrote. But I didn't want to take too many books."
       
    
     

Cops on bikes wall off chaos at Cleveland convention

 

  

     The flood-the-zone technique the police are using to control protest at the Republican National Convention is not without its hazards: I watched how a scuffle that broke out after an attempted flag burning turned into a densely-packed mob scene that might have been more dangerous than the incident that sent scores of cops—and members of the media—running to the same spot. (The would-be flag burner, for fans of divine justice, ended up setting fire to his pants, and 18 were arrested in the resultant scuffle. I did not see the incident itself, so can't judge whether 10 cops would have handled it more easily than 100; my hunch is that more isn't always necessarily better). 

    But in the main, it has been very effective for the first three days of the convention, and watching it in action, I thought I would try to describe what struck me as its most noteworthy feature, the use of bicycles as a crowd-control device.

     CLEVELAND — The Bible Believers are back, standing at the edge of Public Square, haranguing the crowd.
     “Your parents hated you,” screams one, through a megaphone. “They spared the rod! They sent you to public schools! Look at you now! You’re pathetic in the eyes of God!”
     The crowd shouts back, makes obscene gestures, pushes closer for a better look.
     Within minutes, Cleveland police start rolling their bicycles around the speaker and his cohort.
     “Make way, make way,” says one. Soon there are 80 officers with bicycles circling the platform, separating the incendiary group from the rest of the square.
     It’s called the “Barrier Technique” and was pioneered by the Seattle police department, which sent officers to Cleveland to train its 280 bicycle cops. The convention is the first time they’ve used the tactic, to direct marchers, to close off streets, and diffuse angry crowds. If the Republican National Convention’s last day ends as peacefully as the first three, credit will go first to the police — 4,500 from 40 departments across the country, though not Chicago (“They have their own problems to worry about,” quipped one high Cleveland police official).
     But the humble bicycle, skillfully deployed, also deserves praise.
     “Absolutely wonderful,” agrees a Cleveland police officer. “Saved the day.”

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"Father God, Bless Mark and his family...."

     Officer Mark Young and seven fellow officers from the equestrian unit of the Fort Worth Police Department drove with their mounts from Texas to Cleveland this week. As they lined up in front of the Terminal Tower, as part of 4,500 police officers providing security for the Republican National Convention, they were approached by Cathie Burson, of Mt. Gilead, Ohio, a member of Hope Is Here, an organization that brought 100 of the faithful to the convention to pray with people they encounter here. She thanked Off. Young for being here, protecting everybody, and asked if she could pray with him. He said yes.
    "Father God," she began, "bless Mark and his family and all your fellow officers." When she was done praying with him, she asked if there was anything I wanted to pray for. I thought about it, and told her that my mother is worried about me, being in the thick of the protests, and perhaps we could pray for my safety, with her in mind, and we did. It was a nice, quiet moment, and a few minutes later, when I found the Bible Believers in the square, again, spewing their Bible-based poisonous hatred, I was glad I had run into people who were trying to use their faith for good, to aid and comfort humanity instead of harassing it.  Isn't that what religion is supposed to be all about?

"Go back to Latinoland"

     
     I've been writing so much from Cleveland — two columns and a news story just yesterday — that I've fallen behind posting the stories on the blog. This is from the first day, and I wanted to get it up before time and subsequent events mooted it. While many protesters are kids lost in street theater or loons on a lark, I was impressed with this young lady's quiet fortitude and sincerity in the face of the indifference and hostility of those surging past her.

Patricia Eguino 

     CLEVELAND — Patricia Eguino stood near the gates of the Republican National Convention, holding a small white sign with green letters: “Latinos against Trump.”
     “I’m completely against Donald Trump,” said the 27-year-old who was born in New York City but lived in Bolivia and whose parents are Hispanic. “I don’t understand racism.”
     By Monday evening, she had been outside the Quicken Loans Arena, buffeted by passing delegates, for five hours.
     “I wish more Latinos were here, more protestors,” she said. “I feel lonely.”
     But the protesters in the Stop Trump march numbered fewer than 400, not the “nearly 1,000” that organizer Mick Kelly claimed, nor the thousands he predicted earlier. Beside the march, protests tended to be scattered, with the media crowding around the more flamboyant individuals, like performance artist Vermin Supreme, wearing his boot hat and rambling about his pony-based economic system, or a man in a polar bear suit drawing attention to global warming. Far more visible was the massive police presence. Squads of officers from around the country were stationed on every corner, or so it seemed.

     There were certainly protesters to be found at the convention. A “Coalition to Stop Trump” made up of students, Black Lives Matter activists, trade and anti-war protesters marched down East 9th Street to War Memorial Plaza on Monday afternoon, where they were confronted by Christian extremists, who displayed signs condemning gays and Muslims and hurled grotesque, sexually-explicit insults at the crowd. The police quickly moved in, using their bicycles to form a barrier between the groups.
     Eguino, a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University, wished more of her fellow students had come, but understood why they didn't.
     "They were scared," she said. "Of violence."
     Eguino heard "a lot of racist comments."
     "People told me, 'Go back to Mexico,' 'Go back to Latinoland,'" she said.
     Trump supporters also rallied, and at least one carried a semi-automatic rifle. But their fierce antagonism toward dissent was not in evidence, though in light of the "Don't Believe the Liberal Media" signs plastered on the street, perhaps take that with a grain of salt.
     Jim Gilmore, an author and motivational speaker from Chesterland, Ohio, walked down Euclid Avenue wearing a t-shirt proclaiming "DUMP TRUMP" in big bold letters, but was not harassed by the Trump faithful. He said he wore the shirt more as a lark than a protest against Trump, though he described himself as "a Republican who doesn't like him."
     "It feels like a ghost town," he said. "It's not a vibrant atmosphere."

Protesters don't hate Trump enough to vote for Hillary

 

Tom Moore

      CLEVELAND — The Republican National Convention was about to nominate Donald J. Trump as its candidate for president. So naturally the protesters milling around Public Square had something to say about the party and its champion.
     “I’m here because Donald Trump and the GOP stand for racism misogyny, homophobia, violence,” said Tom Moore, 24, of Massachusetts, holding a handmade cardboard sign reading “GRAND OLD PARTY, SAME OLD KLAN.”
     “Not that Hillary Clinton doesn’t have her own track record with racist violence,” added Moore, who wore a green T-shirt, an orange batik skirt, and combat boots. “Hillary Clinton advocates racist hate, but there’s no one like the GOP.”
     So which one is he going to vote for?
     “I’m going to vote for Jill Stein.”
     The Green Party candidate. But isn’t that just a vote for Donald Trump by proxy?
     “It is a terrible gamble,” he admitted.
     At a colorful mosh pit of belief, where you can't swing a cat and not hit some kind of oddball performance artist, fringe constitutional theorist or foaming religious zealot, perhaps the rarest opinions are proud Hillary Clinton supporters. Those who admit voting for her, maybe, are not exactly gushing with praise.
     Erika Husby, 24, of Chicago, wore a rectangular smock painted with orange bricks and "WALL OFF TRUMP" painted in blue.
     Does this mean she's supporting Clinton?
    "Probably," she said, looking stricken. "I think that I will, sadly and bitterly."
     Oskar Mosco, 35, a rickshaw driver (if such a thing is possible) from Santa Barbara, Calif., held a sign that said, "JUST SAY NO! TO WHITE SUPREMACY."
     "I want to be able to say to my kids and grandkids that I took a stand," he said.
     Does that stand include voting for Clinton?
     "I haven't decided between Dr. Jill Stein and [Libertarian candidate] Gary Johnson," he said, rejecting the idea that it has to be either the Republican or the Democrat or a wasted vote.
     "I don't want to support dualistic thinking," he said. "The world is not black and white. There's gray."
     What's wrong with Hillary Clinton?
     "I think she's a wolf in sheep's clothing," he said. "She's the 1 percent."
     But persistence pays off, and finally I located Haley Corradi, 24, a high school math teacher from Minnesota who held a sign reading "LOVE TRUMPS HATE" across a background of rainbow stripes.
     Was she planning on voting for Hillary Clinton?
     "Definitely," she said, smiling broadly.

Protests, non-voters and a linty-fresh Donald Trump

Sandy Buffie and friend. 

Melissa Brown

     CLEVELAND — No one goes to the 2016 Republican National Convention expecting to encounter a life-size bust of Donald Trump constructed out of 30 gallons of dryer lint held together with two gallons of glue.
     But it makes perfect sense when you do.
     “At the end of the week, I’ll take the best offer,” said the artist who created it, Sandy Buffie, who said that the money will benefit the Center for Arts Inspired Learning, which organizes activities for kids including, aptly enough, an anti-bullying program.
    
     Welcome to Cleveland, where the streets are alive with acres of t-shirts praising the take-it-to-the-bank GOP nominee Donald Trump and castigating his certain opponent, Hillary Clinton, as a hellion who should be in prison: on some shirts, she already is. There are cross-wielding preachers, $1 iced water vendors, 100 Indiana State Troopers in their “Smokey Bear” hats, plus thousands of officers from around the country augmenting Cleveland’s lean force. Delegates in suits, media in shorts and a general funhouse effect, though the city is reacting with pride.
     “You know the convention’s there?” asked Melissa Brown, riding the No. 75 bus toward downtown Cleveland. Assured her new friend did, and asked what she thought of it, Brown, “old enough to know better and young enough to do something about it,” said: “It’s great. You got all political views and bring a little money to the city. Everybody’s happy. It’s a win-win.”
     Not that the hoopla is going to gull her into voting. Brown, who is African-American, isn't supporting either Trump or Hillary Clinton.
"The only way I'd vote is if Jesus Christ put his name on the ballot," she said, explaining that her church, the Church on the Rise in Westlake, is handing out "Elect Jesus" banners.
     Brown exits the bus, gets aboard a red line Rapid Transit train to Tower City, the hectic hub of the convention. She takes a seat behind Mike Tallentire, 27, who works the third shift restocking a Walmart Supercenter in North Olmsted, Ohio. He used his day off to handprint a lengthy statement on a white t-shirt, a quote from Theodore Roosevelt about the need for immigrants to assimilate in this country. Then he headed downtown to attend an America First sponsored by Citizens for Trump.
     "He just seems the lesser of two evils," Tallentire says, doing a balancing gesture with his hands. But as he speaks, he warms to Trump.
     "He's a businessman not a politician," said Tallentire. "So maybe he can do something about the deficit that never seems to go down."
     And the more extreme statements of Trump's, about immigration and such?
     "The media twists his words around."
     Take Ahmer Mohamed, a Cleveland cab driver for 17 years. He's black, and a Muslim, and voting for Trump. That bit about barring Muslims at the border?
     "He's changing his mind," said Mohamed. "He's not against Muslims. He's against enemies. He's said he's sorry. He's OK now. Lot of people have a bad idea, that he's a nasty racist. He's a strong guy."

The circus is in town, and that town is Cleveland

     "There is something about a national convention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or a hanging," H.L. Mencken wrote in 1924. "It is vulgar, it is ugly, it is stupid, it is tedious, it is hard upon both the higher cerebral centers and the gluteus maximus, and yet it is somehow charming. One sits through long sessions wishing heartily that all the delegates and alternates were dead and in hell — and then suddenly there comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour."
     Take comfort, then, that the spectacle that will unfold this week in Cleveland is not an unprecedented descent into madness, not a radical departure from the stately decorum we like to imagine our forefathers exhibited when conducting political business. Just the same old craziness in a new box.
     That said, given Donald Trump's genius for attracting the carnival fringes of American life, the Republican National Convention, beginning in Cleveland on Monday, promises to be a circus on an epic scale.
     Ring One is the candidate himself, whose off-the-cuff pronouncements are — take your pick:
     A) a refreshing breeze of candor wafting into our sealed room of political correctness.
     B) terrifying blasts of hate and demagoguery that would tear our nation apart if anyone took them seriously. (Spoiler alert: It's "B.")

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