Elephant in the Room: Car confined by anarchists
August 26th, 2008, 10:14 am · 8 Comments · posted by mschroeder
Newport Beach’s Mike Schroeder, former chairman of the California Republican Party, is a guest blogger at the Democratic convention.
After listening to a rousing speech by Michelle Obama, we all boarded our buses to head back to the California Delegation hotel where I had parked my car.
I sat next to a delightful white haired delegate from Washington D.C. who previously had lived in Orange County. She recently retired as a administrator of a labor union. She sweetly described how she had often stayed at the Saddleback Inn in Orange County and rankled at seeing the portrait of Ronald Reagan that hung over the check-in desk. Upon check out, she religiously filled out the comments card for the hotel and suggested they redecorate by removing the portrait of Reagan.
After I arrived at the California Delegation hotel, I found the entire hotel sealed off by very heavily armed police, some of whom were equipped with automatic weapons and all of whom were wearing body armor.
On talking to the police officers and a couple of the bystanders, depending on whose stories you believed, a group of anarchists/demonstrators were arrested in front of the hotel for attempting to demonstrate in front of/attack the hotel.
This came as no surprise. Democratic National Conventions have a long and checkered history of violent protest and heavy handed police reaction. The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago was so beset with riots by protestors and severe televised repression by the police, that it was widely credited with helping the reelection of Richard Nixon. The 2004 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles treated the television viewing public to the spectacle of protestors and delegates alike being mowed down by rubber bullets fired by the police.
On this night, the police decided to book each of the anarchist/protestors they had arrested in the parking structure where my car was parked — sealing the garage so that no one could have their car.
Hence a group of delegates assembled in the lobby of the California Delegation hotel.
Notable sightings:
— Orange County Democratic Chairman Frank Barbaro: pumped that the U.S. Men’s Volleyball Team had just won the Olympic Gold Medal (he and I had co-chaired an event for the team the week before they left for Beijing Olympics that raised $92,000.).
— Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook: pumped that she got the lawsuit that I filed against her for using an improper ballot title dismissed (the Court of Appeal ruled that it would have had to be filed in Sacramento, not in Orange County.).
Time to give up on my car and take a cab to my hotel.
August 26th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Instead of blogging us in Orange County, I strongly suggest that Mr. Schroeder look for his Sheriff’s badge that he has not returned to the Sheriff’s Department. His lack of concern and lack of responsibility is shocking because he not only lost the badge once, but twice when he was given another. Apparently, many of the individuals issued these badges thought they were badges of honor or merit badges for having been contributors to Sheriff Carona. Mr. Schroeder needs to take care of Orange County business now.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
The 1972 DNC was in Miami. The 1968 DNC was in Chicago. Tell me Nixon would have beaten Bobby Kennedy. And he cheated in 1972 when he didn’t have to.
August 26th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Um, what is this guy talking about?? The Chicago convention he refers to was in 1968, not 1972 (sorry, but 40 years ago qualifies as pretty ancient history to me - and by the by, check out the antics at the Republican gathering of 1976 in Kansas City, during which Reaganites tore out Ford delegation telephone lines on the convention floor among other cute pranks, if you want to really discuss convention violence), and the Democratic Convention in 2004 was in Boston, not LA. There were indeed some small scale protests in 2000 (mostly occurring after the police cut off power to a concert including Ozomatli and Rage Against The Machine - not a good idea in any event), but the “mowed down by rubber bullets” stuff is fantasyland.
If this is the great grey eminence of the Orange County Republican Party, no wonder things are in such a mess.
August 26th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I was at the 2000 Democratic Convention and quite vividly remember the rubber pellets flying and the baton-wielding cops poking people in the ribs. I was supposed to interview Tom Morello after the Rage concert. Myself and one of his handlers were following him to his car. A line of officers in riot gear opened to let him through, then closed on me and his handler. We never got through. I guess I looked dangerous, what with all those press credentials hanging from my neck.
August 26th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Dan and rth:
Thanks for the edit on the year for the Chicago Convention. My wife was also on me on this cause it was her birth year. Will correct the edit. As far as The LA convention in 2000, I am focused on keeping this blog reality based and you obviously both missed the memo on what happeded there.
August 27th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Your original post claimed (implicitly but pretty clearly) a history of political violence at democratic conventions, as if the two were linked by some inherent flaw in the people of that party. Plainly put, that’s complete crap. If you regard the disturbance in 200 over the cops’ turning off the power at the Rage concert as political violance and not the utterly predictable reaction of rock fans to having their concert squelched, well, you don’t know rock and rool crowds - especially those on the punkish end of the spectrum that would be at a Rage concert. Hell, ther’d probably be a similar problem if you turned off the power at a Jimmy Buffett concert - though the crowd there would more likely throw little pink drink umbrellas or something (I welcome more creative suggestions on this image - my imagination sort of failed me here).
More importantly, both the 2000 LA disturbance and the 1968 Chicago riots (here blame has to be shared all round) arose in major part from police overreaction ( a Federal commission went so far as to call Chicago a police riot). The LA incident will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with LAPD’s characteristic iron hand tactics over the past 40 or so years, from Ed Davis’ tenure on (and honed to a fine arrogant edge by Darryl Gates). The immigration demonstration breakup last year in MacArthur Park was only the latest example of LAPD’s ham-handed crowd control playbok (the City will be paying through the nose to injured bystanders, media folks etc. for years to come).
So your premise that democrats gathered together is a likely place for civil unrest is strained, to say the least. And THAT’s reality based.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Two incidents over the past nine conventions, starting with 1968 - the latest, as we both appear to agree, an ancillary matter that had nothing per se to do with the convention (proximity is not a relationship, just as correlation does not equal causation). That’s “a history”?? Spare, me, Mike, you can spin better than that. Drop this line, it’s not profitable.