In the morning, at the start of a week of magnificent hope, of thrilling anticipation, of great new history, here was Wendell Foster, a pastor and a politician from the Bronx, N.Y., talking over coffee about the convention.
I listened intently. I was here for a huge world story — Barack Obama strides to the front of America. But I learned my politics from the late Tip O’Neill, who always proclaimed, “All politics is local.”
So I listened to this local story. Foster was on the New York City Council for years. He allowed that Obama could have been a lot tougher against John McCain lately. But it was tales of New York politics that Foster wanted to tell. A great way to start the morning.
After this, I went out to a glorious day with no major political gathering — candidates Obama and Joe Biden were not in town. I wound up in the hotel lobby. Hearing shouts from the street, I went to the front door and found a large, industrial lock hanging from a thick cable.
The sight of it caused the day to go dark. I ran to a side door and slipped out into the street. There was a crowd of about 500.
“Make out, not war!” a young woman called out. She had on a red bandana. Around her was a crowd out of the 1960s: young, scruffy, noisy. But I didn’t see a shove.
There were the police riding on one station wagon. Then, another 10 on another wagon. The lines of cops were on both sides of the crowd. I saw groups of cops walking down the sidewalk with automatic weapons pointed to the sidewalk.
The march ended after about 500 passed. They were followed by 10 police on horses. You had flashing red lights on police cars, determined faces under helmets, the clip-clop of large horses, and the shouts muffled by the scarves covering their faces.
At the corner, there were police in a tight circle, a formation, with automatic weapons pointed down. Big black guns. The police were in riot black with padded knees and shins. They work for a city that seems this week to be ready to live by “trouble ahead, trouble ahead, if you look for it, you’ll find it.”
The guns and grimness and the young, loud demonstrators acting as if to challenge, immediately took you back to a night in Chicago, so long ago, in 1968. But suddenly it was right in front of you. What was that sound? The Chicago police throwing a college kid through a plate glass window? But there was no such thing here, although the scene Sunday was about a foot away from Chicago.
Learn from bitter memories. Violence spreads like spilled water.
The demonstrators really were nothing to worry about. But they sneered and the cops sneered, and the sheer tension in the air took you back through the years to shrieking and crowds racing crazily through streets. It brought all these nasty, dark recollections back.
Clearly, I must be on the way out because I don’t handle the pictures in my mind anymore. If you had to write one line about Denver’s historic week, it is this: Please remember the past as you guard today.
Jimmy Breslin is a Pulitzer Prizewinning columnist from New York City.
