Inside the Convention: Day One
July 25, 2016
With an average of 4–5 hours of sleep per night, the four days of the Democratic National Convention are already becoming somewhat of a blur in my mind.
I will do my best to document what I experienced as a member of the California delegation, and want to make it clear what I write here represents my (limited) perspective alone. There were nearly 1900 delegates from 57 states and territories for Bernie Sanders, and that’s not including Clinton’s even larger number of delegates and superdelegates. I imagine many of us had vastly different experiences at the convention, saw things from (literally) a different angle, and I cannot presume to know any other delegate’s intentions, motivations, etc. I will speak to what I observed and deducted from my limited point of view throughout the week.
Monday Morning
Myself and fellow CD-28 delegate Lindsay Nelson hurried to the Downtown Marriott to check-in and attended our first delegate breakfast (which came as part of an exorbitant $200 breakfast & party package the DNC heavily encouraged us to purchase). For $50/day, the breakfast buffet was mediocre, but at least it gave us access to the Marriott’s ballroom, where the California delegates — Clinton and Sanders alike — dined at round tables while party luminaries took the stage to give short speeches.
Lindsay and I found a table near the back with some Northern California Bernie delegates, representing Santa Cruz and San Francisco (two of my favorite places). We chatted casually amongst ourselves as a no-name speaker or two came and and went. And then, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla took the stage.
Within seconds of his name being announced, Alex Padilla was greeted by a loud “BOOO!” that erupted from all across the ballroom. Bernie delegates began to stand up at various tables, chanting “COUNT OUR VOTES! COUNT OUR VOTES!”
Some explaining may be in order if you’ll allow me to digress. California’s primary election, from the point of view of many of us on the ground, was a mess. Not an Arizona waiting-in-line-for-5-hours mess, not a New York this-whole-block-of-Brooklyn-can’t-vote mess. But a mess nonetheless.
A lot of it came down to a lack of education for both voters AND poll workers. I ran a polling place on June 7th when California voted. Not just worked at — I supervised, was in charge of, a polling place. What was I required to do in order to play such an important and sacred role in our democracy? Attend a single two-hour training. A two-hour training that moved at lightning speed and contained so many rules and procedures and labyrinthian details my head was spinning. And this is coming from someone who had already researched the particulars of this complex primary election in order to educate new voters on college campuses.
So I was not surprised on election day to hear that there was mass confusion and mass ineptitude at polling places across the state. Many poll workers didn’t know that “NPP” (No Party Preference) voters were allowed participate in the Democratic primary, and forced them to vote “provisionally” on ballots that would not be counted for weeks, pending verification of each voter’s eligibility. Over 40 voters entered my polling place to find they were marked down as “Vote By Mail” — all of them swore they’d never signed up to vote by mail, but per the rules were forced to vote provisionally.
The result was that over a week after the election, at least 1.4 million ballots cast in California had yet to be counted. When the final count was certified in early July, Sanders came much closer to Clinton than the initial double-digit blow-out reported on June 7th. But the dysfunction and confusion throughout the entire process, including the torturously slow provisional and mail-in vote count, led many Sanders supporters to believe there were ballots never counted or thrown out. And here comes Alex Padilla, the guy in charge of the whole convoluted system, launching into a speech about his enthusiastic support for Hillary Clinton.
The divide in the room was instantly apparent. Clinton delegates, many dressed professionally and politely applauding for Padilla, were shocked to hear the room suddenly devolve into a cacophony of dissent. Sanders delegates jumped to their feet, waving Bernie signs in the air as they booed and chanted “COUNT OUR VOTES!” Some Clinton delegates responded to the outpouring of rage in kind. An older, imposing army veteran marched up to our table and screamed, “STOP BOOING!” (ironically at a young woman who was not herself booing). Others just seemed generally appalled, confused, at a loss.
The dissent didn’t stop with Padilla. The mayor of San Francisco was next. Members of the San Francisco Bernie delegation shouted in protest, citing his collusion with big developers to gentrify the city and push out the low-income and homeless population. By the time none other than Rep. Nancy Pelosi took the stage, a large Bernie banner had unfurled behind my breakfast table, and I suddenly found myself sitting directly in front of an “Asian American Pacific Islanders for Bernie” sign (which I was then awkwardly photographed alongside as the press swarmed).
At this point there was nothing in particular being protested besides a general objection to the party establishment. The leaders trotted out on stage repeated canned lines in support of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine—to an audience that was in outright revolt against the party itself. It was an audience that believed the whole thing had been rigged, and that these election officials and superdelegates were complicit in the dirty game. It was an audience that hadn’t yet cast their votes as delegates (that was happening on Tuesday) and weren’t ready to hear speaker after speaker naming Clinton and Kaine the official nominees.
And that was just breakfast.
Lindsay and I hurried over to the nearby convention center (not to be confused with the Wells Fargo Center, where the primetime TV spectacular would be held) to attend a workshop on Medicare-for-All and to hear Bernie (the man himself!) address us delegates directly.
The mood was electric as we waited outside a large room where Bernie was to speak. Non-delegate activists who had also traveled to Philly were gathered in the convention center, leading us in chants of “SHOW ME WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE! THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!” It was what democracy looked like! I looked around and saw Americans from every corner of the country — of every race, age, sexual orientation, gender identity—each representing thousands of voters, most attending a national convention for the first time. I was thrilled to be among them as we chanted “FEEL THE BERN!”
And before I knew it, I was sitting near the back of an at-capacity ballroom space while Killer Mike and Rosario Dawson revved us up and introduced the man who brought us all together: Senator Bernie Sanders.
There was so much love in that room for the man. The courage and integrity he had shown throughout his career — integrity he retained through a contentious presidential race — had inspired us all to re-engage with politics after years of disillusionment. So it saddened me when the main news story from that afternoon speech was the moment of booing that followed Bernie asking us to unite behind Hillary Clinton to defeat Trump. Contrary to the headlines, it was not Sanders himself that was being booed. It was an expression of the general anger and frustration many delegates felt at the idea of lining up behind a candidate — and a party — they felt was hopelessly corrupt. We’d been spoiled by this rare politician, this man who had survived 26 years in Congress as an Independent, who refused to take money from the billionaire class even as all his colleagues did so happily.
But that moment of dissent did take Sanders aback, and portended a turbulent night to come.
On the sweltering, muggy streets of downtown Philly, thousands of delegates crammed onto the DNC buses that transported us to the Wells Fargo Center for the first night of the convention.
Nearby, massive protests had filled the streets and town squares of Philadelphia, celebrating Bernie Sanders but also calling for a #DemExit, an end to political corruption, a cry to hold the DNC accountable for its participation in the oligarchy pulling all the strings.
I was both excited and nervous as we passed through security and approached the massive arena. I had no idea what to expect. It was clear that the California Sanders delegation was ready to bring those protests in the streets into the convention itself. We had already done so throughout the day. But what would it mean — what would it look like — inside the Wells Fargo Center on live national TV?
We grabbed as many seats together as we could in the California section, still clutching our “Medicare for All” and “No TPP” signs we’d collected at workshops earlier in the day. I was thrilled to find that some of my favorite Bernie surrogates—Rosario Dawson, Josh Fox, Shailene Woodley, Linda Sarsour—were sitting amongst us as delegates themselves. They were all so down to earth and right there alongside us as we held up our issue-oritented signs.
The convention began, as it did everyday, with a religious invocation — something, by the way, most millennials and Bernie delegates thought was totally weird and inappropriate for a political event. Sorry, call us European or whatever, but we are SO over this religion in politics thing.
And then the Christian pastor delivering the invocation uttered the words:
We have an opportunity, oh God, to give undeniable evidence of our commitment to justice and equality by nominating Hillary Rodham Clinton as our candidate. Hallelujah!
While many burst into cheers, the California delegation — and soon, Bernie delegates throughout the arena — erupted into a now-familiar “BOOOOOOOOO!!!!” Even though I don’t recall participating in the boo-ing at this moment, I do remember feeling I was with them in spirit. We haven’t even voted yet, we’re still pissed as hell about Wikileaks, and a pastor is launching this convention by invoking Clinton’s nomination as a testament of “undeniable evidence of justice” before God.
And she was just the first speaker. Next came Marcia Fudge, the host of the convention, filling in for Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, who had gone into hiding even though her resignation wasn’t effective until the end of the week. As soon as she mentioned Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, the crowd once again erupted into boo’s and chants of “BERNIE! BERNIE!” countered by “HILLARY! HILLARY!”
It was nuts. It was exhilarating. It felt like we had gone back in time to a bygone era, where conventions were messy, where factions of the party did publicly aire out their differences, where it wasn’t all a polished Hollywood production.
The DNC has been concerned about this kind of PR nightmare for months, ever since similar outbursts and confrontations occurred at the Nevada State Convention. That’s likely why, as we took our seats Monday, all delegates received both text messages and an email from the Bernie campaign, asking us to be respectful and not to engage in protests that would reflect poorly on our movement.
But the California Bernie delegates I knew weren’t here to make sure the show went off without a hitch. They were not here because they hoped to schmooze and rub elbows with their elders in the Democratic Party. The California Bernie delegation was made up of activists — these were Occupy veterans, environmentalists, anti-war protestors — people who came back to the Democratic Party because of Bernie. Despite the historic symbolism of her nomination, Hillary Clinton (and by extension, Bill) is to many of us also a symbol of the corruption that has distanced us from the Democratic Party.
I would love for Clinton and the party to prove us wrong in the next four years.
But Obama broke many of our hearts when he appointed Wall Street veterans to his cabinet, failed to vigorously prosecute the institutions that brought our economy to its knees, and fought for a health care bill that did cover more Americans — but did so by constructing a convoluted, expensive, inefficient system that goes to great lengths to protect private insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry. That’s not to mention his administration’s crackdown on whistleblowers, expanding the scope and powers of the surveillance state, escalation of the drone war, vigorous support for the corporate Trans-Pacific Partnership, and so forth. These types of policies we once associated with moderate Republicans, not “progressive” Democrats.
So when Bernie delegates broke into boo’s, into chants of “NO MORE WAR!” “NO TPP!” or “BERNIE!” it wasn’t because they prefer Donald Trump, or want to burn down the whole party (okay, maybe a few people want the latter). It was because Bernie’s campaign gave them hope the Democratic Party could be saved. That it could shed its oligarchical trappings, say “thanks, but no thanks” to campaign donations from billionaires on Wall Street, and use the power of the internet and crowdfunding return to being a party of, by, and for working people.
They were there because they trusted Bernie. They did not, in any way, trust the DNC. This was not a happy Unity party. This was Occupy Democrats.
And so the night went on. The boo’s eventually tapered off while speaker after speaker gave relatively generic speeches (and as the California delegates realized they had access to an open bar). We were all unified behind a rousing speech by Maine state Rep. Diane Russell, a delegate for Bernie Sanders, who celebrated the movement and its push to eliminate or limit superdelegates.
Michelle Obama gave a great speech that everyone applauded (who doesn’t love Michelle?), followed by a now-standard stump speech by Elizabeth Warren, which received some sporadic heckling from Berners that felt betrayed (why didn’t she endorse Bernie early on and help him win??).
But of course, the highlight of the night was Bernie Sanders, who received maybe the longest continuous standing ovation I’ve ever been a part of. If there was one moment of true unity on “Unity” night, this was it. It was a good three minutes before Bernie could even get a word in.
And he didn’t let us down. Bernie, as always, brought his speech back to the issues. He used words like “oligarchy” and “revolution,” the types of phrases conspicuously missing from the fluffier, vaguer speeches throughout the night. He called for a continuation of our movement to elect progressives at all levels of government, while at the same time averting disaster this November by defeating Trump.
It was a joyful ending to a turbulent night.
As we rode back to the downtown Marriott, I remember thinking to myself, “my God, this is just the first day.” There were three more nights to go, and from here on out it was going get a lot less about Bernie and a lot more about Hillary. The Bernie delegation, led by California, had shown a willingness to disrupt the convention proceedings on national TV. How would the Clinton team fight back? How would the media respond? Were they even covering us or were they doing their best to hide our signs and voices? Inside the convention bubble, I literally had no idea what it looked like from the outside.
One thing was for sure, the party was not unified. In fact, the deep divisions that already existed between Hillary and Bernie delegates had only hardened after Monday’s events. It felt like battle lines had been drawn: it was “us” vs. “them.” The party faithful vs. the party dissidents.
The Bernie delegation was not under anyone’s control; there was no top-down authority that would be whipping us into unified action (or forcing us not to act). Plans spread by word-of-mouth that the California Bernie delegation would meet in a secret location near the Marriott’s indoor pool the next morning to attempt to self-organize. There was widespread paranoia that Clinton or DNC agents may be listening, or even infiltrating our ranks. It felt like we were part of an underground resistance, a rebel force that had infiltrated the seat of power.
And after Monday’s events, there was no doubt “they” knew we were here and intended to keep making noise. I went to bed that night feeling like anything could happen this week. And whatever happened, nobody was going to be able to control it.
Read the rest of my day-by-day account of the 2016 Democratic Convention:
The Political Revolution: An Ending and a Beginning
Inside the Convention: Day Zero
Inside the Convention: Day Two
