Archive for July 25th, 2004

A Case of First Impression

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glasscastle - July 25, 2004 @ 7:41 pm · ESL Links

Together with fellow blogging stalwarts Dave Winer and Rick Heller we have breached the security of the Fleet Center and taken our designated spots among the journalistic hoi poloi covering the Convention.

Our seats are in the nosebleed section, 319 to be exact, but almost directly across from the stage and with a beautiful view of the super-giant video screen. But alas, no juice and no wireless! Which means no live blogging! We have yet to discover the nearest hotspot from which we can post, and accordingly this posting is going out from our office, to which we have repaired before heading to Central Square to meet up with the full bloggers contingent.

The Palace is decorated to the nines, and the tension is starting to mount in anticipation of Thursday’s Coronation. The area around the Fleet was a surrealistic circus. Princes and Pages are running hither and tither, each to his or her appointed task and eminating an urgency to indicate their task is the most important of all. In the almost total absence of anything remotely newsworthy, the press were feeding off the press, interviewing each other in a sort of informational feeding frenzy. Still, there is a frenetic energy in the air which promises embarassing excess and celebrity hijinx, if nothing else. The assembled wealth, power and prestige is enough to give anyone pause, but what is politics but the opportunity for ordinary men and women to expose themselves on the grandest stage, and with the whole world watching.

Stay tuned……

An Army in Retreat

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glasscastle - July 25, 2004 @ 2:20 pm · ESL Links

Every night, after the sun goes down and an army of tired office
workers and business people leave downtown Boston in a mass exodus to
the nearby towns and suburbs, another army invades the center of the
city. Thousands upon thousands of humble janitors, cleaning personnel,
trash collectors and maintenance workers flood into the area and work
through the night, starting at the highest floors of the urban skyscrapers
and working their way down to street level, cleaning as they go. They
remain invisible and anonymous to the members of the mainstream economy,
who arrive each morning to find their offices clean, their wastebaskets
empty and their floors waxed and shiny.

One of the poignant ironies of US Immigration Policy is that a great
number, perhaps the majority of the these workers, are undocumented illegal
aliens, often working two or three jobs and sending home monthly payments
to relatives in economic disaster areas. These payments, in some countries,
represent the second or third largest source of national income, outstripping
exports, loans and tourism, and keeping millions of people from starvation,
if not poverty.

This week, however, many of these phantom night-workers are shaking
in their boots, afraid that the incredibly intense police presence on
the streets of Boston represents a serious threat of detention, arrest
and deportation. In many cases these people have scarring memories
of the the traditional treatment of powerless peasants at the hands of
third world police forces…

For many immigrant workers in Boston, the security checkpoints, subway
searches, and beefed-up police presence for the Democratic National
Convention are more than just pesky commuter inconveniences. They’re
cause for alarm and anxiety.

Many undocumented workers fear they will be detained or
even deported if they are stopped by police checking for identification.
Even immigrants here legally, especially those who fled countries with
repressive governments, are shaken by the prospect of random stops and
searches.

from the Boston Globe