Your man at the DNC (or at least within several blocks)

So I went to see the hoopla today. I rode the bus from Golden to Denver and went to a forum convened by the Progressive Democrats of America (http://www.pdamerica.org/).

The first panel discussed immigration. The two takeaway points were:

A) There are two types of factors that lead to immigration, push factors – that is crummy conditions in other countries – and pull factors – opportunities that exist in the U.S. that don’t exist elsewhere. Immigration policy has largely dealt with the pull side, busting U.S. employers for violations (when it’s politically expedient). But what about push factors? Are we making good-faith efforts to help Latin American countries thrive? The panelists argued that U.S. imposed neo-liberal economic policy, so-called “free trade,” and American military support for corrupt regimes have created de-stabilized conditions that cause people to leave their homes.

B) All people, citizens or not, have a vested interest in immigration policy. If we normalize the idea that some people are illegal human beings because they didn’t have the good fortune to be born here, and we pursue them aggressively (think police raids with lots of guns), then we begin to think of a world where civil liberties are contingent as normal. First they came for the janitors, but I was silent...

The second panel discussed economic justice. The highlight was Jim McGovern, U.S. Rep from Massachusetts who was remarkably candid about poverty and hunger in the United States. There was lots of talk about a new New Deal, such as a modern Civilian Conservation Corps to repair the American infrastructure. The other panelists were the heads of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch (http://www.citizen.org/trade/) and the Front Range Economic Strategy Center (http://fresc.org/). They were pro-Union and anti-WTO, and frankly, a little glib.

This was the truest of the true believers, there was lots of hugging and some painfully sincere acoustic musical performances. On the whole though, I was pretty impressed. I like passionate people, even if I don’t agree with everything they say. Sean Penn was there. Aloha Mr. Hand.

I bailed on the third panel and went off in search of the free speech zone. I was secretly hoping to get caught up in a march for something cool – religious freedom in China or equal pay for equal work or fully funded children’s health care – but it didn’t happen. I couldn’t get within several hundred yards of the convention center. The friendly policemen with machine guns told me how to get to the designated protest area, but it was a total joke. There was a stage and a live microphone, but the place was dead empty. Literally, it was me and some lady looking at each other and asking “where are the protesters?’ Kind of scary.