When thousands of Republicans descend upon a heavily Democratic city, there is a surrealness that goes beyond the familiar strangeness that a political event like the Republican National Convention (RNC) usually brings to town. And it’s not just the crazy costumed folks like the man dressed as Uncle Sam maneuvering his Segway between conventioneers on Milwaukee’s Wisconsin Avenue.
As I was walking to the corner of Water Street, for example, a guy riding a 10-speed bicycle had a few choice words with two Republican conventioneers and soon the skinny and tall young man in a black T-shirt and shorts jumped off his bike to chase the dark-suited men around with his fists raised. Some shoving erupted and a few choice swear words were exchanged. A nearby policewoman soon intervened. After a minute of shouting and near blows, another officer came out of a nearby air-conditioned squad car to help out.
A couple of Marquette University students clutching their TJ Maxx bags stopped to watch, a hometown Harley-Davidson motorcycle roared by, and I noticed the “Welcome Future Fake Electors” sign in the window of the storefront of Penzeys Spices, which is large national spice retailer based in Milwaukee and known for its liberal and anti-Trump views. The faint outlines of the “Trump” graffiti someone had spray-painted on a Penzeys window a few weeks earlier were still visible. Eventually the bicyclist-Republican confrontation was defused when the police sent the man angrily pedaling off on his bike while the Republicans were left yelling that the guy was a “crazy addict high on drugs.”
I’m pretty sure he was not one of the Downtown Milwaukee Public Service Ambassadors who are supposedly welcoming delegates and others attending the RNC at Fiserv Forum and roaming the downtown area in the summer heat to keep the streets “clean, safe and friendly.” I also didn’t notice any of those ambassadors while watching thousands of protesters marching along those downtown streets – or even afterward when I was walking in the blazing sun trying to find a cool place to grab a beer.
I eventually did find a place for a beer, the lobby bar at the fancy arts hotel, Saint Kate, conveniently across the street from that day’s protest assemblage. Sadly, I asked about happy hour but the bartender told me the hotel canceled its normal happy hour this week. I guess the rich Republicans sitting all around me didn’t need happy hour. I stayed for just one beer, as the big screen TVs that were moved in for the occasion blared Fox News coverage of the RNC while the poor guitarist-singer hired for the now-suspended happy hour tried his best to be heard above the TVs, including one inches away from his head. It was a losing cause.
Some serenity was found at the nearby RiverWalk along the Milwaukee River. As I climbed the stairs on Wells Street up from the RiverWalk, two exasperated Republican women lugging huge suitcases saw me and pleaded with me for help. “Are you from here? We keep going in circles trying to find our Airbnb, and our GPS is going crazy.” I calmly reassure them they are not far, but they will have to walk around the RNC Security Zone to find their lodging on Old World Third Street. They don’t seem to believe me, but I explain the straightforward Milwaukee street system to them. “There’s Second Street, right there, see the sign? Third Street is the next one over.”
I point to where I think their Airbnb is – near the Usinger’s Sausage factory with its sign towering over the river to the north. “Well, it does say it’s along the water, but why are you pointing that way if Third Street is over there?” gesturing to the west. I explain the angled street and a curving river. I tell them to walk north on Plankinton Avenue until they hit the security zone and then walk along the RiverWalk until they get past it and then aim toward Usinger’s. They look disbelieving but I walk with them to Plankinton and show them an address on a seemingly abandoned building and explain the numbering system again. They thanked me and headed off in the heat, rolling their luggage down the street in roughly the correct direction.
A few other lost Republicans also asked me for some directions – a few even wanted to see the nearby sculpture of Fonzie, who was the tough greaser guy played by Henry Winkler on the popular old ABC sitcom in the 1970s and ‘80s called “Happy Days,” which supposedly was set in Milwaukee in the 1950s and ‘60s. I debated whether I should just stay on the street directing the visiting delegates to the “Bronze Fonz,” but it was too hot to linger.
The scene reminded me of a couple of pin-striped delegates – the man wearing a blue suit jacket while the woman had on a pink dress – who were sweating outside the 3rd Street Market Hall earlier. They sat on some chairs next to me soaking in the 85-degree, 63-percent humidity, while waiting to enter the RNC security zone. “We’re from North Carolina. We thought it would be a lot colder here,” they told me as I improvised as an unofficial downtown ambassador and welcomed them to Wisconsin, noting it had been comfortably cooler the previous few weeks. “We must have brought the heat with us,” the woman chuckled with a Southern drawl.
On my way to protests later, I stopped at Zeidler Union Square, thinking there were going to be some speeches there, but except for dozens of young temporary workers hired to handle crowd control, nobody else was around. Well, there was a picnic table with four women who seemed like they might know what was going on, so I walked over there to chat. There, I found a candidate for the U.S. Senate – Rejani Raveendran – and three very enthusiastic supporters, Jane Dombrowski and her two daughters, Allison and Crystal Wisinski, who all soon told me their life stories, while occasionally discussing their favorite candidate, Raveendran, and why I needed to vote for her. “She isn’t a millionaire so can’t get on the ballot otherwise,” referring to the Wisconsin Republican primary in August, where Republican millionaire Eric Hovde is running to take on the Democratic incumbent senator, Tammy Baldwin.
I soon learned that Raveendran is a single mother, a survivor of domestic violence and homelessness, a nurse and a “regular mom fighting for you,” who wants to make groceries, gas, and housing affordable, end foreign wars, pass term limits and ban insider training. As they handed me a stack of campaign cards, I tell them I am registered to vote in Colorado but will pass along her campaign information to my brother who lives in West Allis. Then, after learning I teach journalism in Colorado, they proceeded to tell me all about their lives and their polka connections – “Have you heard of Norm Dombrowski and the Happy Notes?” Jane asked me, promoting her husband’s polka band. “When my son is governor, we will start a big Polish festival in Wisconsin,” she added.
When they learned that I had once been a city editor at a daily newspaper near their home in northern Wisconsin, everyone started excitedly telling me their own story. Allison is Miss Northwoods Wisconsin and is competing for Miss Northern Lights and eventually wants to win the Miss Wisconsin title. “I want to be the first plus-size Miss America,“ Allison said, proclaiming her body-positive message as she thrusts her phone at me showing a video of her singing “Don’t Rain on My Parade” at the Miss Northwoods competition. Meanwhile, upon learning that I teach at Colorado State University, where their sister is studying, the quieter Crystal found a photo on her phone of a journalism student at Colorado State University. “This is my sister’s roommate and she’s studying journalism. Do you know her?” she asked. It turns out the roommate, Sophie, was indeed a student of mine. Crystal quickly took a photo of me and sent it to Sophie, who confirms it. “Where did you run into him?” Sophie texts to Crystal.
I finally remembered that a protest march was going to start a few blocks away at Red Arrow Park, so I handed the sisters my business card and told them we can reconnect when they visit the sister in Fort Collins, Colorado, and I headed off to the protests. On my way there, I wondered what more could possibly await. I eventually heard the chanting protesters and found them across the Milwaukee River. The estimated 3,000 protesters seemed to represent a wide variety of interests – from people protesting Israel and supporting Palestine to others who denounced racism, fascism, and discrimination against women. They all were anti-Trump, of course.
After walking alongside the march for a few blocks in the heat, I decided to sit down in Red Arrow Park with a bottle of warm water being freely distributed to everyone and wait for the marchers to return to the park, where the participating groups in the Coalition to March on the RNC 2024 would conclude with speeches. When the protesters and the hundred or so journalists following them returned, ready for the speeches to start, I saw one spectator pass out and he was carried out to a waiting ambulance.
I had found a nice quiet spot in the park next to some young protesters who were discussing lunch options – I suggested going to the Milwaukee Public Market but the young woman next to me said that seemed a bit too much – “I just want a nice quiet place where I can drink some cold water.” A couple of anti-abortion protesters – a woman in a blood-stained wedding dress and a man in a blue suit coat with red-and-white striped tie – were preparing a little show. “They’re anti-Trump but pro-life,” the young woman next to me explained to her friends. Soon, the pro-life couple were joined by others, started their wedding performance and railed against the “abortion-industrial complex.” The group chanted, “Babies never choose to die,” while the opposition chanted, “Pro-life, that’s a lie. You don’t care if people die.” Nearby, the speeches had started, and the woman next to me sprung up when she heard her group called and ran up to the rally’s main microphone and started urging the crowd to support abortion rights.
As the chants continued from both sides, I decided to leave that incredibly noisy corner of the park. Then, some journalism students from Syracuse University interning for a local Washington, D.C., TV station stopped me and asked me if they could interview me – and I said, “Sure.” I think I overwhelmed them, though, with my stories about Milwaukee, my love of a giant music festival called Summerfest I attend in Milwaukee each year, and my experience with the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee (mostly moved virtual because of COVID) four years earlier. I then gave them ideas for cheap food and drinks for students but they started packing up their equipment, disinterested in what an old guy had to recommend for nightlife.
A few minutes later, I saw a reporter I recognized, Maggie Vespa from NBC News, eating lunch under some shade trees in the park, and introduced myself and invited her out to Colorado to talk to my students. Her producer cut me off, though, telling Maggie her deadline was in 10 minutes.
Across the street, a small group of Milwaukee Police Department officers on horseback were out front of about 50 officers on bicycles. I asked the equine squad for the breed of horses and one policewoman told me, “Percherons, with a few Clydesdales in the back.” I then asked, “Are you here just in case….?” And she responded, “Yes. Have a good evening.”
About 4,000 out-of-town police are reportedly helping out with the RNC security. The Secret Service and police presence was felt throughout the downtown area. And Saturday’s assassination attempt of Trump, who was injured in the Pennsylvania shooting, which also resulted in the killing of a volunteer firefighter and the wounding of two other rallygoers, made the armed presence and barricaded streets even more noticeable.
Back at the protest rally, I noticed many of the police officers there were from Columbus, Ohio, where I lived for a year while getting an MA in journalism at Ohio State University. I chatted with a couple of Columbus officers about the university and the Ohio State Fair, but they showed no interest in small talk. The next day, Columbus police officers working in Milwaukee were reported to have killed a man about a mile from the convention. Witnesses said two homeless men were fighting in a park and one of them was carrying a couple of knives. Witnesses said several of the Ohio officers fired upon the man with the knives when he charged at the other man. Over at the nearby RNC, the theme of the day was “Make America Safe Once Again.”
This surrealism is tragically getting too real.