By Brett Warnke

Editor Note: San Diego Free Press contributor Brett Warnke is in Philadelphia. He’ll be sending updates and interviews from the DNC.

On Monday, storm clouds hung over Philadelphia as Democratic delegates arrived to Wells Fargo Center at AT&T Station south of downtown to a protesting crowd virulently against a Hillary nomination.  Over 1,000 protestors, most with Bernie Sanders shirts or stickers, were in high dudgeon after revelations of tilted tables and bias within the DNC.

Gone was the sense of hope and inspiration I’d seen at Bernie rallies in San Diego.  What remained were conversations among clusters of Bernie die-hards about “tilted tables” and “election fraud.”  The crowd was angry and Bernie signs shook with desperate vigor.  But Monday had the feel of a stopped station wagon, a father behind the wheel, screaming at the glaring dead end sign.

Of course, there were the smelly anti-choice foamers shouting down real conversations over their loudspeakers.  Above us all were tall fences bordering FDR Park that separated the lanyard-sporting delegates who spilled from their trains from the loud wall of protestors.

The broiling and mostly youthful crowd was as noisy as it was furious, so angry en masse that nearly every delegate who walked passed—ignoring the yells of the corralling police—took pictures of the mass of protestors wandering the park.  (Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, gerrymandered out of his district seat in 2012, forwent the picture and walked alone, waving to no one in particular through the fence.)

In every cluster of protestors I walked into, many near the barricades had drawn their social security numbers and phone numbers on their arms, preparing to be arrested, words like “cheat” and “fraud” were bandied about.  The fix was in.  The Democrats cheated.  Wasserman-Schultz was in on it.  The DNC was crooked.  The crowds repeatedly moved from “Bernie’ chants to forceful echoes of Alex Jones’s call to “Lock her up!”

“We’re going to lose in November,” Lisa Heinenan told me, wearing a “Hillary for Prison” shirt.  Heinenan travelled from Grand Island, Nebraska with her daughter to protest Hillary Clinton’s nomination.  Her splayed flowered banner read “BERNIE” with dozens of signatures from across the country.  She sang Bernie’s praises until I asked about the tone of the protests, their purpose and goals.

“Bernie is inside, texting his supporters not to protest or disrupt the convention,” I told her. “What is all this for?”

“We’re 99% defeated,” she said.  “But this, this is a last ditch effort…” she said, nodding as if I would understand.

I didn’t.   I looked around at the “Hill No!” signs and the “Bernie or Jill, Never Hill” signs, a bit bemused.

“Bernie is inside, texting his supporters not to protest or disrupt the convention,” I told her. “What is all this for?”

“Sanders didn’t release his delegates,” Heinenan said.  “He hasn’t conceded,” she said.

Such statements made me wonder whether the Bernie die-hards were saying that their candidate was supporting a criminal?  Was he complicit in her crimes by failing to be on the barricades demanding, as Alex Jones had just days ago, to “lock her up”?   What did it say about the “wise” sage from Vermont, a man so many told me they respected as pure and honest, if he now supported a criminal?

There were groups of Dreamers, a “Food Not Bombs” march, as well as bands, parades, and a thirty-foot inflated marijuana joint.  But the storm growled and I escaped into the subway.  On the train, I spoke to two young women who, like me, were escaping the nearly 100-degree heat before the storm.  Both had “Bernie or Bust” signs.

“I had to come for a bit,” one told me, “I had to see it through.  But now, I’m going home.”

Photos: Brett Warnke

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Brett Warnke

Brett Warnke is a fiction writer and freelancer who lives in San Diego. He lives in Ocean Beach and can be reached at brettwarnke@gmail.com

Latest posts by Brett Warnke (see all)

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