In the afternoon I walked around Post Office Square for a while with an SEIU-led rally, which combined the broader themes of the day with a specific brief against the depredations of UNICCO, the huge janitorial services company. A couple of hundred union members and other immigrant workers and supporters marched festively, wearing U.S. and home country flags, carrying signs of protest and unity, chanting familiar slogans, mostly in Spanish.
A diverse delegation of hotel workers showed up just before the start, followed by a truck carrying about a dozen school bus drivers. Sprinkled among the workers and organizers were a few student activists and middle-aged socialists. Some passing cabbies honked their support. Office workers on lunch break looked on in bemusement. Two young men leaned out of the old courthouse building and started a mocking “get a job” chant. TV, radio, and print reporters interviewed marchers and organizers. They made sure to talk to the two counter-protestors who showed up.
It made quite a picture. Post Office Square is like an oasis at the base of a canyon, almost completely encircled by tall office buildings, all of which are cleaned by the kind of people who were marching. On one side is the old courthouse, with its imposing columns and gray stone walls. The topography emphasized both the togetherness of the marchers and the challenges they face.
Heading up to the State House and the bigger event on the Common, this feeling didn’t really change. It was a good day, but few politicians came out to publicly identify with the rally. Tourists and office workers, generally, went about their business and seemed barely interested. (This puzzles me about tourists: you stumble upon a piece of a major national event that also patently reveals a truth about the city you’re visiting; but you avert your eyes and continue snapping pictures of the tulips and the statues.) A big student delegation arrived from the other direction; but back at B.U., it was business as usual and the vast majority of students did not know or care about the event. In other words, if you weren’t organized, through some combination of your own interests and a group that facilitates them, you weren’t there. I was surprised (why should I have been?) that it wasn’t the first, second, or third item on the TV news I watched later last night.
I’m also a Sox fan, and I was lucky enough to get tickets for last night’s game, after finally winning one of those e-mail lotteries the Red Sox operate for choice tickets and big games.
At the game last night it struck me that a Red Sox game is a model of live, collective unity. Everyone is focused on the same goal and tries to unite their voices to will its achievement. The differences are huge, of course: Sox fans are spectators, not participants; consumers, not workers; weighted toward the white middle classes. But many fans feel like they’re involved in a real struggle or mass movement, and they’re pretty representative of the segment of the public who don’t often feel that way.
Fenway is a populist rallying ground, and Red Sox Nation is in a perpetual state of war. There are fascist overtones. Sox fans are very susceptible to, actually willing participants in, identity triumphalism and the demonization of enemies, with last night’s theme being the “traitor” Johnny Damon. Jeter and A-Rod, brilliant baseball players, are vilified by baseball fans, sometimes in rabidly homophobic language. When you’re there, in a sea of 35,000 people, all wearing the colors and chanting the slogans, euphoric from booze and fun and the drama of the rivalry — it’s either exhilarating, or scary, or pitiful, or just sort of jolly, depending on your mindset.
This is, in conventional politics, our voting public. In the media’s mind, the Fenway crowd represents everyone in New England, and it reports the team that way. Not so with the rally. That represents a special interest. The Globe today seemed to spend most of its efforts separating the Latino, Asian, and student experiences.
Many will say, c’mon now, baseball’s just a game, all contained within the boundaries of consuming leisure and playing at unity; fans are rarely moved to the point of sacrificing anything more than a couple hundred bucks and some time.
But that’s what politics asks: money and/or time and energy, and an effective movement wouldn’t require much more from people than Sox fans give to their team. And if it’s the case that, in sports, the cause itself is less important than the impulse it satisfies — then could the Fenway crowd, and the demographics it represents, be convinced to root root root for the rights of the workers for a living wage and healthcare, of everyone to marry, of affordable housing, etc., etc. — on the belief that it has a personal stake in these things being achieved?
Maybe the contrast between the rally and the Sox game, and media coverage of both, speaks to the challenge transform-the-culture-of-politics progressives are up against in a statewide election; but the similarities suggest their potential for success.
I’m a bit too sleepy now to say much of substance. I do think a lot about the parallels between politics and other endeavors, such as music. There are things in common between getting out the vote and getting people to come to a show; there were similarities between the grassroots structure of the Dean campaign and moxy früvous fandom. I don’t go to sports games much (like, once a decade :), but I don’t think it’s inappropriate to compare to politics and learn from what you find.
Ever been to a Springsteen concert? It’s populist, spiritual, moving, and draining, but you can’t help but wonder about the fascist-like adoration of the crowd, including me. Just like a Sox-Yankees game. Why can’t that happen in politics? Actually, it does on a rare occasion – anyone who was in the Fleet Center during Barack Obama’s speech felt the same thing. I’m old enough to remember John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, but there are some more recent examples – Ted Kennedy at the 1980 Convention, Mario Cuomo at the 1984 Convention, Jesse Jackson at the 1988 Convention. After sticking with safe candidates for the last few election cycles, I am ready to be moved again – Deval Patrick is the one candidate who can do that for me.
Never seen the Boss (nor, indeed, Moxy Fruvous), but I’ve been to enough shows to recognize the comparison. I have a live recording of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid in which Ozzy spends about 10 minutes in the middle of the song just getting the crowd to repeatedly roar something incoherent. It sounds just like a Nazi rally. Some rock stars are tortured by this: Pink Floyd’s The Wall makes the fascist connection explicit, Rush’s “Subdivisions” rips high-school groupthink (which is why us nerdy rockers, in my high school, groupthinkingly loved it), Nirvana’s Nevermind seems dedicated to asking fans not to submit blindly to its own irresistible chords. Bono of course embraces it and tries to redirect it to good places.
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As for conventions, I’m in the opposite place to you, Yellowdog. I was high on Howard in 2004, and was disappointed when he fumbled or got submarined by the press or out-establishmented by Kerry or whatever happened. (Note that it was a rallying cry moment (the Scream) that didn’t translate well on TV that was used to try to turn CW against him.) But then I got swept up again at the Convention here, not by Obama (I missed him), not by Kerry’s efforts, but by the spirit in the room that dammit, we can win this thing and turn the national tide toward better things. So whatever happened in Fla. and Ohio, it felt disillusioning that so many swing voters were unmoved. My urge now is to be calculating. I’m still open to the field organization argument, but I wouldn’t bet on Patrick’s ability to move a live crowd against months of TV ads and direct mail.
My reference to moxy früvous was not related to the experience of seeing their shows. It was about … well, here’s the incident that first got me thinking about the parallels:
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I took a couple of friends to Iowa to canvass for Dean before the caucuses. For our drive back to Boston, we wanted to find crash space halfway, which is approximately Cleveland. I emailed people I knew at Oberlin but they were all away for winter break, but I had another thought. On the Dean for America official web site were links to state groups, so I followed the link to the Ohio for Dean group. On their site were links to regional groups, so I found the web site of “Northeast Ohio for Dean”. I emailed some of the oranizers, and one of them wrote back to offer us crash space! I actually stayed with them again on my way to Wisconsin a couple of months later for that primary.
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It reminded me of the way fruvous.com and related websites served as a clearinghouse for people roadtripping for concerts. You could connect with people for rides, find crash space near any concert, and meet people in other states through going to shows.
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There are a lot of other parallels but that’s the one that first got me thinking about it.
a grassroots model that transcends traditional local bonds but remains focused around a goal, which I guess is what people mean by ‘Netroots. Lots of nonvoters to be had who are already tuned in, if you’ll forgive the pun, to that type of connection.
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In the Sox example, though, lots of the swing voters who are willing to participate in sports/media populism, even to the point of screaming and hugging, are also the kind of people who see crashing on couches and knocking on strangers’ doors for a cause as youthful, unserious behavior. It’s unfortunate but true.
Hey, Cannoneo, my calculating urges led me to Kerry in 2004 and look what happened. I’m through calculating and now going with my gut, which is why I’m for Patrick. It’s interesting that you and I have switched places – you were with Dean while I was with Kerry – now you’re with Gabrieli while I’m with Patrick. We’re just cancelling out each other all over again. Maybe we should both just take a pass and listen to some music for the next four months and ramp up for the run to November after the Primary?
Add Howard Dean’s announcement speech to the list.
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(If you’ve never seen it, watch! Also, think back to the time: June, 2003. Bush was popular, Democratic leaders were not criticising him, civil unions were a new and scary thing, the Iraq war was popular, …)