RNC Day 2: Zack vs. Marge

The RNC and its protesters, day two.

By Ben Westhoff

So much rage in downtown St. Paul, and yet not nearly enough Rage. In town to perform at the Target Center on Wednesday, Rage Against The Machine was to play a free, unannounced show at the State Capitol on Tuesday evening - at least according to teenagers on Twitter, in any case.

The day after the convention's riotous opening ceremonies, folks who didn't have to go back to work (students, hippies and anarchist punks, joined by about 500 police officers) gathered on the capitol lawn for something called Ripple Effect. Most would call it a "free concert" featuring acts like Michael Franti, Dead Prez, Anti-Flag and the unfortunately named Wookie Foot, but organizers preferred "events" "embracing the core values of the environmental and social justice movements, with a collective understanding that the solutions to these problems will require us to break down issue and generational barriers." 

I'm not sure if any issue barriers were broken down that day, but the great unwashed chillaxed as hard as they could, playing with those green "floating" orb things, attempting (unsuccessfully) to double dutch and meditating in a giant rectangle. Phone numbers were exchanged, utopian alternate universes were contemplated, and the world's only "Nader/Gonzales ‘08" sticker was applied to a backpack.

It seemed that everybody was still exhausted from the previous day's protest marches, window smashing and urine stockpiling. You know leftists are tired when they can't even get pumped up by a Medea Benjamin speech. But when word of Rage's imminent arrival began to leak across the internet, the assembled (or at least those who could afford an iPhone) began to perk up. The crowd began to balloon around 6, when folks got off from their jobs at the skate shop and the juice bar and made their way downtown.

Anti-Flag had taken the stage in a flurry of black and pink, and were now working the crowd into a frenzy with brief bits of inspiration like, "The world sucks. So let's party!"  Folks moshed like it was 1999, and bassist/hype man Chris #2 dropped hint after hint that something big was about to happen. When they departed the stage they left all their instruments; the idea was that Rage would pick them up and play four songs.

Though you wouldn't think too many of St. Paul's finest would have copies of Evil Empire (or be Twitter savvy), the cops were wise to the plan, and -- since they didn't have the manpower to accommodate such a hugely-popular act - moved to halt the proceedings. Upon Rage's backstage arrival at 6:30, they were detained by a group of Minnesota State Troopers, of all people. As riot guard police and bike cops surrounded the premises, a trooper wearing one of those sweet flying saucer hats (she looked something like Marge Gunderson in Fargo) kindly informed Zack de la Rocha, Tom Morello and the like that they didn't have the necessary permit to go on stage.

Rocha didn't get worked up about it - dude must meditate his ass off - and instead, while the chanting crowd screamed for blood (or at least for "Testify"), he plotted with his mates a way to keep the crowd from killing anyone while simultaneously creating a sense of, um, collective understanding about breaking down generational barriers.

The band exited past the police behind the stage and weaved out to the front of the crowd, where they implored their delighted minions to take a seat. Most everyone immediately sat; one suspects if Rocha had asked them to poop in their pants they would have done it. Next, bullhorn in hand, the group led those within ear shot in a short set of acapella sing-a-longs. Call it Rage karaoke -- sans machine, of course.

After twenty minutes or so of this, the band implored the assembled to rise, and they lead them in a march towards the Xcel center, where former lazy-presidential-candidate  Fred Thompson was preparing to address another group of dogmatic people. The bike cops pedaled nervously alongside the marchers (I'm going to suggest there were about 3000 people), and guards wearing pads and gas masks stood nervously along the route. No windows were smashed -- that I saw anyways -- but when they reached the perimeter of the buffer zone in front of the convention center, folks began shaking and rattling the fences. The police gave them a few warnings and then, according to reports from the front line, began firing off tear gas and those little bombs that make a lot of noise.

So, party over. Everybody hopped aboard their fixed-gear bikes or skateboards and headed back home, just in time to catch Big Brother 10.

In conclusion, it's fair to say that the day two protests felt less like a post-apocalyptic movie and more like a professional wrestling match. Though bloodlust was in the air, no one really got injured, and observers couldn't help feeling as if the whole thing was just a little bit scripted.

[Photo Credit: Neil Reiter]