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This
is the closest I get to donning my hard hat, or at least my suit and
tie, and heading off to battle for my art. I am a journalist, and if I
always will be then I probably also always was. If I don't understand
things, on any number of levels, I try to explore them.
At
present, I am exploring the relationship between the paralympic family
and their prodigal sons, elite athletes with intellectual disabilities.
It will air at some point
in the near future and will hopefully enlighten any of you who are
unsure as to the relationship, or the Paralympic movement in general.Full details here
The final journey
I arrived in Washington on the 28th of August on what was the final leg of my US debut. It also turned out to be the final journey ever of an iconic political figure.
Two days previous I had been making my way through the surreal setting of the Dallas Greyhound hub when the monitors switched to eulogies to Senator Edward Kennedy. Kennedy's recent health problems had been well publicised and so it took a few minutes in that sanitised context for the news to sink in. The last of the three Kennedy brothers, life long servents to the United States of America, had died. The news took some of the joy out of my trip through to Memphis, especially a brief conversation with other Memphis-bound travellers but somehow it seemed appropriate to be heading to a town associated so clearly with civil rights after the demise of a man so intimately linked with such battles.
By the time I alighted at Dulles Airport in Chantilly, Virginia; I had forgotten about his death, or more specifically I had forgotten that he had a final journey to make - from Hyannis Port in Massachussetts to Andrews Air Base in Maryland and thence onward down the road through the District of Columbia to Arlington National Cemetry in Virginia.
But the cemetry was one of the scheduled stops on my tour of the city, and I was soon to learn that "Washington news is national news".
My tour was rerouted to begin in Arlington in order to get back inside the Beltway before the roads were closed for the final tour of the man known as "Teddy" Kennedy.
I eventually alighted at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Centre with the intention of gaining leaflets from the Washington DC Visitor Centre. The entrance was manned by an illogically tight security regime through which I proceeded but the centre was closed. The policemen at the door then told me this was "because of Senator Kennedy" but that I might have a chance at the Capitol, past my disembarking point and something short of 9 blocks further south.
No such luck. Not only was the Capitol visitor centre closed, but the building as a whole was. And the aforementioned arrival of Kennedy had left this icon of American democracy emptied onto the lawns. I was advised by the Capitol Policemen that the procession would be arriving in 25 minutes time. But such a prediction proved to be wildly optimistic.
The quote about Washingtonian news came from Ashley Evans, who would later help out as a fixer of sorts and would provide enjoyable personal company. As a visiting student, she told me that the characteristic was one of the intoxicating things about the District.
Even in this age of instantaneous communication, most of the tracking of the motorcade from Andrews down to Capitol Hill was done via the spectacularly unscientific process of the aforementioned Ms. Evans consulting her mother - who was watching the CNN coverage - via her cellphone. There was also a brief attempt to establish if CSPAN, the parliamentary TV channel, had begun to show coverage. They had not.
There were thousands of people and the rendition of America the Beautiful ,which was triggered by a choir inside the building but otherwise utterly uncorreographed, was astounding in its power. There was shuffling of people into the more telegenic positions on the capitol steps to fill out the TV network shot but no other grounds given to media management. I stood on the lawns for two hours and others had been there longer than me, and yet the atmosphere remained strictly sober and reflective. It was difficult not to think about the tragedy of the family and the degree of necessity which had driven Kennedy to the Senate after both his brothers were assassinated.
It is clear to me how much the Kennedies mean to this nation. It has been said before that they are America's royal family and when asked whether I had seen any display of the people's respect on the same scale the closest I could find was Princess Diana. And so the last remaining Kennedy brother made his journey past us all on the lawns of the capitol and the surrounding streets of Washington DC, to a final resting place alongside John and Robert in the Arlington National Cemetry.
The scale of the motorcade was breathtaking as well, the hearse followed by a cavalcade of coaches filled with Kennedy family members but after they had departed, the spell which had bound us all to the lawns was quickly broken by a desire to rehydrate from the humid and hot Washingtonian afternoon.
JFK had died before I was born, but Teddy Kennedy was still active in politics until he died and thus the crowd contained many more young people with a live memory of the actions he had taken.
And I feel privileged to have been there to show my respects, even though my attendence was a complete accident of timing.
European Elections? Well, they are happening somewhere
As
this day begins, I am acutely aware that here in Brixton there is
little to no evidence that an election is taking place at all.
Certainly not a European one, given that the only literature I have
received has been either locally focussed (such as the flyer from the Conservative Party) or nationally focussed (the newspaper from Unite against Fascism, attempting to persuade voters to 'vote against the BNP').
In fact, the functioning of the election reminds me of coverage of the Indian election,
sprawling as both are across a large physical terrain and the space of
several days. Of course, this creates the effect that the 'European'
election degenerates into a series of nationally executed elections -
even though the end destination is the EU Parliament.
At least, the results are all announced together.
What strikes me the most is that I saw more evidence of emotional engagement in the buildup to the Lisbon Treaty vote in Dublin,
which would tend towards the idea that negativity energises political
debate about the state of this Union. Even if the USA has recently
proven the power of positive psychology on political discourse. It
could be argued that people are exhausted from venting frustration at
domestic politicians.
Update:
I just cast my vote, in a deserted tenants hall building staffed by
three bored and frustrated electoral officials. They commented on the
length of time they would have to spend (10 hours, I believe) and I
reflected that if they were present for the entire event, they would be
there three days.
The
ballot paper was so long that it had to be triple folded in order to be
presentable. The party lists were listed alphabetically by 'list' name
(the last one was one man, albeit with a 'list name') and the
standalone independents (as opposed to the aforementioned 1 man list or
the 'independents coalition' of the Jury Team) were shunted to the
bottom end, regardless of their name. Messy and convoluted as voting
systems go, ultimately an allegory for the Union's politics as a whole.
I find the barriers to list-free entry staggering, and the barriers to
entry of a list only slightly less off-putting. See the reflections of
a candidate in today's election, who has ended up as the only candidate
for his grouping here.
Not
only that, the party lists largely stand under national political party
names which are not readily identifiable with the European Parliament
groupings within which they are whipped at EP level (best summed up
with the sentence "The European Parliamentary Labour Party has no involvement in the campaign for the European Elections."here). In case of the UK Labour Party, the whip hand lies with this organisation.
Such a situation disenfranchises union-wide connected politics to the
extent that there is only one party fielding candidates on a united
manifesto across the entire union.
Some of my deepest explorations were sparked by someone else's catalyst.
The
best example of this comes in the form of my trip to Madrid, scheduled
as a holiday and turned into an exercise in field reporting.
Obama Night in Madrid
The US election night reached out to Madrid on a night when the
premise of the head of the free world assuming his role achieved some
verification. On the night of November 4th I stood several people deep
at the Democrats Abroad Spain's
official party as their candidate ascended to the US presidency. There
was a tiered approach to events with the ground floor of the
extraordinary Circulo Bellas Artes filled
with sanctioned rock and alcohol-fuelled partiers most of whom were not
paying a great deal of attention to the mute, but massive, screen which
was streaming CNN. The second floor hosted an official, but select
collection of people quaffing drinks and seemingly also not paying a
great deal of attention to the immediate events of the night.
The
top floor, spilling out onto a terrace, was packed to the rafters with
a mixture of Spanish, American and a handful of neither such as me. The
vast majority of eyes were transfixed by the immediate stream of
results from the big screen CNN footage at the far end, with an audio
component helpfully added.
As the night wore on, the percentage
of Spanish to Americans headed towards the latter and the atmosphere
got more raucous. Democrat candidate Barack Obama got off to a flyer
but when I spoke back to the Election Special on Resonance 104.4fm in
London, John McCain had begun a rally so the atmosphere had turned to
trepedation.
After myself and my fixer and colleague Robin Clark had ended our conversation with London, the donkeys of the Democrat Party
regained their momentum and by the time we walked out into the
unusually chilly Madrid morning, President-Elect Obama had reached his
position by a comprehensive margin and people around me were crying.
In
a country known for the vibrancy of its politics, it seemed unique to
witness the defeated candidate refer directly to the unprecedented
election of a black person to the role but out in the street I was
acosted by a black woman from San Francisco who echoed the sentiment
when she told me forcefully that Obama was 'her president'.
My thanks go to Robin for his assistance and to Jack Thurston and the production crew at Resonance FM for linking everything together.
On April 1st, I walked out of my night job to the following observation:
Observations from 'a city under siege'
Tomorrow, the 'London Summit' begins down the road from my office deeper in the Docklands of the city, at the Excel Centre.
The
drumbeat of incessant insistance that violence will be manifest in the
streets of The City continued to play itself out across the newspaper
pages.
I left
the office in which I work and walked from Tower Bridge to London
Bridge for my early morning bus home. No body of people, not even the
florescent-jacketed 'cordon supervisors' which were in evidence
yesterday. No tension, in fact I have felt more tense walking through
the winding streets of Shepherd's Bush after a football match than I
did this morning.
Even the local freesheet, City AM, whose readership must have also known that no 'siege' was underway used exactly that metaphor for the days to come.
Whatever
happens in the days to come, there was no siege of the City of London
when I left two hours ago. Neither one instituted by the myriad of
disparate causes which have banded together to protest nor one
instigated by the police/venue security.
In
another two hours, the 'silver horse' of the Four Horses of the
Apocalypse is scheduled to make its march (it is actually a march, of
people) from London Bridge transport interchange over the bridge itself
and into the City itself.
More details here
The following day, The G20 arrive en masse
An
odd vibe in the air this morning. A police riot van parked on the
central reservation of the road to Tower Bridge and a motorcycle
outrider likewise on another part of the same junction.
And then
nothing for a stretch before a diplomatic convoy scuttled up the hill
to meet me. With a shrill blow on his whistle, an outrider told me to
STAY THERE and I waved my compliance.
It seems that the G20 are
on the move from their embassies to the summit. I have no idea who I
saw, there were no flags or insignia. Nor any behavioural evidence.
Policing is visible but seems to be concentrated in clumps around
pressure points.
That said, there was the incongruous sight of
three riot vans in convoy heading away from the summit sight and along
the river westward. Projects in the pipeline
Next
year I hope to bring together my outsider experiences the art scene
which gave a soundtrack and a backdrop to the fall of Slobodan
Milosevic in Serbia in the late 1990s with the recollections of those
who were closer to events. That will be The Only Alternative, and I am
grateful so far for the assistance of Gordan Paunovic of Radio B92, a good friend and useful contact, and Professor Eric Gordy of University College London for his insights into the period.
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