Monday, August 14, 2000. It was a great day in Los Angeles. It was the day the truth of what this country has become played out, violently, yet quite plainly, in a calculated stormtrooping march of police state glee. All day long there had been a palpable energy on the streets. These are sidewalks ordinarily devoid of people. It was one hundred degrees. Hotter still amidst the concrete. Everywhere downtown, people walked. Delegates to the Democratic National Convention were conspicuous in their conservative attire. A slogan-emblazoned T-Shirt seemed the only uniform of the true American, the freedom fighter, the voice in the wilderness of the new corporate American conglomerate. But the wilderness had emptied out into the streets of downtown L.A. The cacophony had coagulated into the sound of a giant raspberry, mockingly aimed at an establishment club which assumed its liberal credentials were intact.

The only vital mainstream rock band in twenty years was playing a free concert at sunset downtown. The concerned marched under the very wide heading of "Human Need over Corporate Greed. " The march ended up at a parking lot on Figueroa and Tenth Street, just north of the Staples Center. Some estimates put the crowd at 9,000. That is an acceptable amount to this observer, who joined the march on the corner of Ninth & Figueroa, having just finished a delicious lunch at the Pantry Restaurant. Inside, few people dined. The occasional freedom fighter came in asking for water. The staff happily served free glasses of ice water to them. Charity begins at home and in privately owned diners.

Leaving the Pantry at the same time was cabinet secretary Henry Cisneros. We both stopped on the corner to take in the sight of the marchers, the chanters, the large art brut puppets, the line of police in riot gear. Cisneros seemed to be smiling in a perplexed manner. He had to know they were protesting what he and "his people " had become. The rage was against the machine that he was a part of. He seemed to be straining to find a connection with what appeared to be traces of his roots. There was a wistfulness in his gaze, and perhaps a trace of disgust; I would like to think it was not a disgust with the marchers.

Walking North on Figueroa, in perfect metaphorical opposition to the marchers headed south, was former liberal Bill Press. His suit was the same Navy Blue as Cisneros1 but seemed cut from a cheaper, polyester cut. The uniform of the compromiser made affordable to a parsimonious whore. He had a certain shameful tilt of the head as he walked. It was the shame of a man who had sold his soul to the Clinton News Network for membership in the media elite. He ranted until the chance to sell out came around. Bill Press probably rationalizes his many years upholding the corporate takeover of the liberal establishment well enough to be able to look in the mirror on any given day, but on this day, his gaze was fixed to the sidewalk as he trudged without a glance to the new opposition. His was the face of a left that has left and is wholly unable to face the left that has filled the vacuum created by those most recent converts to corporate capitalism.

The parade of the concerned arrived at a parking lot in view of the Staples Center. The staggering heat minimized the confrontational anxiety that is normally produced by blocking a majority of the city streets with brigades of riot police. The crowd was being watched by television cameras, by police and by many DNC delegates huddled shoulder to shoulder on two Staples Center balconies. Observing the beautiful people behind the velvet rope gawking at the crowd of "civilians " made me think, perhaps there is hope for the Democratic party after all. To think that some people would come all the way to Los Angeles in support of the establishment and watch the opposition unleash its cultural angst while Hillary Clinton was inside addressing the nation about herself.

Rage Against the Machine was greeted as opposition leaders. They responded by playing an effective fifty minute set. They covered the MC51s Kick Out the Jams. No curtain call, just the final intense bars of Killing in the Name of and they were gone, along with a substantial portion of the crowd.

By the time Ozomatli took the stage half an hour later, the sun had set, the full moon had risen and both sides were a bit emboldened. The Staples center balconies were nearly empty while Bill Clinton gave his farewell speech and the LAPD moved in on the people, firing mace, pepper spray and rubber bullets at a crowd that was in the midst of dispersing peacefully. Ninety percent of those lingering were looking for the person they came with or figuring out where they had parked their car. The police proved the demonstrators right about the new America: democracy is not tolerated here.

Later media distortions labeling the crowd as "unruly " were laughable, but to whine about the lack of press and accuracy serves no purpose. All journalists today suck corporate dick, sell out simply by turning on the word processor and mock objectivity when they devote one of twenty paragraphs to "critics " of established ideology. When you protest the establishment, you are protesting CNN and the networks. Expecting decency and honesty from the media is like expecting either from the government it is an ideal, not a reality. You cannot expect anything from animals who feed at the same trough as the monsters you despise. In today1s journalism, conformity is the rule and stock options are the shackle. Opposition to the establishment in this country will grow by leaps and bounds when protesters start kneecapping cameramen and microphone-toting schleps. The revolution will not be televised the girl working the backstage gate for Rage Against the Machine understood this when she refused entry to any press. There would be no home video, attendance was mandatory. She knew you have to be present to kick them in the shins and run.

—Mat Gleason