Under the Baobab: The Democratic convention, discourse and disagreement

Monday is the first day of the Democratic Party’s national convention. Every four years the party faithful come together under the big tent to cavort, party, argue, celebrate, mourn, revel and, by the way, establish platform principles and nominate presidential and vice presidential candidates.

This year, and for the past few conventions, everyone knows who the candidates will be — former vice president Joe Biden for president, and Sen. Kamala Harris as his vice presidential pick. But, the rest of the events will go on as usual. The real purpose of the convention is to reenergize the worker bees for the long difficult tasks leading to the election. The 2020 DNC is being held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My wife and I had intended to go but the pandemic altered everybody’s plans. Sadly, even Biden and Harris and most delegates will not be going to Wisconsin.

We went to the last DNC in Philly four years ago. We were present for Michelle Obama’s “we go high” and Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speeches. Sitting up in the nosebleed section we cheered and cried and said goodbye to our beloved President Barack Obama. It was a major moment cheering the first female candidate for president. There were grumblings from some about the party’s choice. Some would have preferred Bernie Sanders. They picketed the convention outside and tried to disrupt inside. At the time it was seen as a slight bump in the road to history.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a Democrat. I have been since the days of President John Kennedy when I was a nonvoting teenager. Most members of my Chicago family are Roosevelt coalition dyed-in-the-wool Democrats. My mom was a committed campaigner for Harold Washington. Some of the older family members born in the South were Republicans. Back in the day, that was still known as the party of Lincoln, the party of resistance to Jim Crow discrimination. It was a different time. There was plenty of disagreement but also discourse about things that mattered.

President Dwight Eisenhower was a Republican. He appointed Earl Warren, the Republican governor of California, to become chief justice of the Supreme Court. It was that court which, in 1954, unanimously decided Brown v. Board of Education and overturned racial segregation in public schools. In 1957, Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to facilitate the desegregation of Central High. It was he who first warned the country about the dangers of the military industrial complex from the presidential podium. A Republican senator from Illinois, Everett Dirksen, helped write and pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act. We Americans from both sides of the aisle used to talk to each other.

The first Democratic convention I attended was in Atlantic City in 1964. The Vietnam War and opposition to it had not yet grabbed national attention. Civil rights was the main discourse. We were trying to dismantle the form of white supremacy called Jim Crow. The struggle was not without resistance. Segregationist Gov. George Wallace of Alabama galvanized a lot of support by challenging President Lyndon Johnson for the presidency. Four years later in 1968 he would actually win five Southern states in the general election running on a third-party racist platform.

We had come to AC in order to support the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. It had grown out of the Southern struggle for racial equality led by Martin Luther King, Bob Moses, John Lewis, Fannie Lou Hamer and others. We were petitioning to seat the MFDP instead of the openly racist regular Democrats. Hamer captured the attention of the nation when she spoke eloquently in support of MFDP at the credentials committee. There was a major split in the Democratic Party. Many of the delegates were in favor of seating the MFDP. Others led by President Johnson were afraid that supporting the MFDP would lose the South in the coming general election.

Some of those who argued against the seating of the MFDP were supporters of civil rights like Hubert Humphrey, and some were Black like Congressman Adam Clayton Powell. There was a lot of screaming and hollering. We picketed the delegates outside and when afforded the opportunity we protested inside. The regular Southern Dems refused to support a platform that included racial justice.

On the last day, they walked out vacating their seats. We immediately occupied them and stayed until we were removed by security. But not before I got a chance to see Robert Kennedy eulogizing his fallen brother. After he finished there was a loud, sustained and tearful ovation. In the end President Johnson’s faction prevailed and the regulars were officially seated. The MFDP was offered honorary nonvoting seats, which we refused.

It was a disappointing time for us. We kept on struggling. Tactics changed, strategies transformed but we continued to walk the walk and tried to bend the arc of the history toward justice.

We all are about to embark on a difficult journey. This will be the most contentious political campaign in my lifetime. I am energized by Biden and Harris. I was gratified to see President George W. Bush at the funeral for John Lewis. But when I look across the aisle. I don’t see an Ike or a Dirksen. I hear no discourse; I hear only dissonance. Somehow, we must find a way to talk to each other. Maybe it begins by listening.