I’m Not The Only One

by Daniel Cuevas

Originally published on Political Storm on October 30, 2004.

Like most people, I seldom care about issues until they hit home. And when the Republican National Convention hit my home this year, I was certainly made aware, more so than the average person. As a reporter, dozens of activist groups I’d never heard of were suddenly contacting me via phone and e-mail giving me details of their planned anti-RNC demonstrations. Bus service around Madison Square Garden, where the convention was held, was suspended for the duration of the event. Civic leaders were calling me and suggesting I write about the notoriously understaffed NYPD, which had reassigned officers from regular duty in local police precincts to security detail for the convention.
I’d seen the Democratic National Convention a month before, and was shocked when activists described to me what had been going on in Boston. Protesters had been holed up in a pen, caged like animals and unable to effectively convey their message to Democrat delegates visiting the convention. The controlling of the protesters in Boston really surprised me; Somehow I thought the Democrats were better than this. While liberals attending the convention spoke about democracy in America, outside the convention hall demonstrators were being punished for exercising their right to assemble and to protest; two rights that are the cornerstone of any real democracy. I guess the Democratic Party showed their true colors that week.
While the Republican Convention was comparatively less oppressive of its protesters, there were mass arrests. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, was determined to make sure that the effectiveness of demonstrators at the RNC was as curtailed as much as possible.
Originally, protesters wanted to hold their rallies on the Great Lawn of Manhattan’s Central Park, not too far from where the convention was being held. Mayor Bloomberg reasoned that so many people (activists estimated that 250,000 people would be there protesting the Republican Party) on the Great Lawn would damage the grass, a poor excuse considering the Great Lawn often plays hosts to concerts and other massive events where hundreds of thousands of feet trample the oh-so-precious Great Lawn.
After watching the exercise in oppression I’d seen in Boston, and learning that both events were being financed by tax dollars at a price of $13 million per convention, I felt there was something terribly undemocratic about the whole thing. I soon learned that Congressional Republicans and Democrats had allocated the funding for the conventions, labeling them as “educational events” and therefore deserving of a combined $26 million in taxpayer money. I wasn’t too surprised to learn about this; screwing the American people seems to be one of the only things these two parties can effectively accomplish on a bi-partisan level.
Do these parties really need a government handout to hold their national conventions? Both camps have millionaires on their sides, considering all the overpaid politicians and the celebrities pledging their allegiance to either party. The events could have easily been financed by their attendees, especially the stars of these shows: John Kerry, the wealthiest member of the U.S. Senate, and President George W. Bush, whose campaign war chest totals $1 billion.
Why should my tax dollars go to a convention I wouldn’t support if they asked me for a contribution? Should conservatives have to pay for a convention for Democrats, whose ideology they do not agree with and vice versa? That’s like the Catholic Church approaching me, a non-Catholic, to submit my weekly tithe.
Government funds are usually used for programs which provide services or benefits to the public. But here, government funds were used to hold these events, local law enforcement resources were exhausted, mass transit services are rerouted making it harder for scores of commuters to get to work, and in New York, the public was not allowed to assemble in a public park. RNC delegates didn’t pump as much money into the local economy as was originally expected. The average tax-paying citizen got a week of confusion with rerouted bus lines, reduction in law enforcement protection,the revocation of their civil rights, and in the end - the bill. So how exactly does the public benefit from these conventions?
But the truly undemocratic aspect of these government-sponsored conventions is that only the two largest parties qualify for this handout. Once again, just like in the Presidential debates, third parties like the Green and Working Families parties were shut out from the same benefits granted to Republicans and Democrats. This act perpetuates a sad cycle for third parties: they can’t get their message out, so they can’t get the same level of political and financial support the other two parties receive. The end result is that their candidates have little chance of getting the votes they need to make them eligible for a series of government handouts.
The Green Party did hold its national convention this year, although you would never know it from the lack of coverage from our nation’s corporate-owned media outlets. And since they didn’t have $13 million in tax dollars to hold the event, they (gasp!) paid for it themselves. Now if a political party with as little money as the Greens can pay for their own advertising (lets face it, that’s all these conventions are) the Democrats and the GOP can do the same. It’s ironic that the Republicans are always criticizing poor people for receiving government handouts, but these same fat cats see no problem or irony when they join with the Democrats to vote themselves a cool $26 million without earning it.
Evergreen Chou, founder of the Flushing Greens, in Queens, NY offered a third party perspective into what he calls the “duopoly” of the Democratic and Republic parties. “We should level the playing field,” said Chou. He’s right about the unfair advantage enjoyed by the Republicans and Democrats, an advantage which will guarantee their people will always fill the chambers of Congress and the White House. Either give all political parties with Presidential candidates tax dollars to hold their national conventions or eliminate government handouts for all of them. Only then can we be one step closer to an actual democracy.