E-Mail This Article to a Friend Resisting compromise (continued)

For the most part, nothing was thrown, and nobody got hurt — even if a few delegates did take off their shoes. Meanwhile, members of the Young Republican Executive Committee dress up in rubber sandals and stomp around Faneuil Hall. Falun Gong has taken over Copley Square. And just across from Boston Common, Libertarian Ian Scott, 26, of Mission Hill, wears a hand-lettered sandwich board that says CONSERVATIVES ORGANIZED TO CRUSH KERRY.

"I just wanted a good reason to walk around with a sign that said ‘cock,’" he explains cheerfully. Scott is part of the Free State Project, which is trying to get 20,000 people to move to New Hampshire and take over elected politics. Why New Hampshire? "We had a vote, and the second-place winner was Wyoming."

"Essentially, in layman’s terms, we’re going up there and vote each other into office," Scott says. "It’s not essentially a takeover per se," he adds reassuringly.

Inside the convention hall, interested delegates can view a pictorial history of their nominee’s commitment to civil disobedience. When the Vietnam Veterans Against the War marched on Washington, in April 1971, Richard Nixon locked them out of Arlington Cemetery. So they took their "military incursion into the country of Congress" to the Capitol, occupied the steps of the Supreme Court, and camped on the Washington Mall. When the Nixon administration tried to evict them, the federal court ruled they could stay on the Mall, exercising their right to free speech, as long as they stayed awake. The vets voted, and John Kerry announced their decision to ignore the order and sleep. The DC police declined to arrest the dozing vets.

Under the Patriot Act, of course, Nixon would have no need to seek court intervention, and the DC police would not have to commit an act of civil disobedience. Today, the vets could be simply rounded up and incarcerated indefinitely. It is, after all, a Time of War.

THE FEEL OF protest and the spirit of rebellion infuses DNC-related events, even when there’s, well, no protest to be found. At Howard Dean’s and the Campaign for America’s "Take Back America" conference, the fire marshal has locked things down. No one is allowed to go in; outside, an overflow crowd sits on the grass, as scheduled speakers come out on the patio to reprise their talks for the crowd. They are hoping to catch a glimpse of Michael Moore, but the filmmaker’s security team isn’t sure they want to let him out in the open air. Too easy to target.

Meanwhile, in the lobby, the air is confident. "We’re going to win the election, and we’re going to push John Kerry," to make good on his health-care promises, says Congressman Jim McDermott, the Shelby Foote of Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. As he waits for a wink from the fire marshal, which will allow him upstairs, the congressman is optimistic about the Democrats’ chances of recapturing the Senate, and maybe even the House. "The House is on a knife edge," he says. "Some of these races are going to be won by 100 votes." The Republicans do not have a clue, he says, because they do not poll the right people. "They poll perfect voters, and these kids are not perfect voters. Kids don’t vote in three out of the last four elections." However, it is these kids — those engaging in protest at the DNC, those who backed Dean, and those who worship Moore — who will provide the 100-vote margins in 2004.

Over at the Hip-Hop Summit at Roxbury Community College, Leonard C. Alkins, president of the Boston chapter of the NAACP, is thinking about those kids and strategizing for the future. Hundreds of people have turned out for this event, and each one has been asked to fill out a voter-registration card. If they are too young to vote, their names are entered into a database for future follow-up. Inside the Reggie Lewis Track and Field House, Boston election commissioner Michael Chinetti demonstrates the new optical-scanning voting machines, and shows how they create a paper trail. "Anyone who is partisan in any fashion, we are asking them to step back," says Alkins. "This is for our young people, so they think they are not being used."

Outside the summit, a PETA carrot prances, and the LaRouche volunteers, tired of being under the gaze of Nation of Islam security, break for a pizza. Across the street, Mike Yossarian — "I’ve heard all the jokes" — has set up shop for Volunteers for Nader. Along with Fraeda Scholz and a woman who calls herself simply Emmia, he awaits the return of Nader ballot petitions, for which they are paid per signature. They have been traveling the country in a Honda Accord station wagon for months now. For these former Kucinich supporters, war is the number-one issue. Backing Kerry simply isn’t an option, says Scholz. "Why do I have to compromise everything I believe in and he doesn’t have to compromise anything?"

THERE HAS BEEN a lot of talk during this convention about free speech and civil rights. But in a world where delegates readily take off their shoes for Vermin Supreme, and attendees at a John Edwards party at the Rack happily hand over their IDs for scanning through a "visitor management system" with recorded name, date of birth, and gender checked against the invite database, it seems that many people have adjusted too easily to the creeping loss of civil liberties. And it’s much harder to regain liberties lost than it is to hold hard to them in the first place.

Over at St. Paul’s Cathedral, at a forum on the Patriot Act, Dennis Kucinich is calling John Kerry the "kind of politician that remembers where America came from."

"We didn’t flee an empire to become an empire," Kucinich says. "We have to continue to challenge the status quo.

"We have to rage against the dying of the light," Kucinich cries, and the house roars.

But perhaps there is an English major or two in the audience who aches to put that line in context. It is not a warrior’s call. Rather, inspired by what he witnessed at his father’s deathbed, Welsh poet Dylan Thomas wrote those lines about surrender to the inevitable. "Old age should burn and rave at close of day," Thomas wrote, and one hopes Kucinich’s use of the line is not prescient: "Though wise men at their end know dark is right,/Because their words had forked no lightning they/Do not go gentle into that good night."

Margaret Doris has attended every national political convention since 1980. She can be reached at boxdeadletter@aol.com