cm731

Subject: Dispatch from Philadelphia

Well, I did not get arrested. Very disappointing. There wasn't much
opportunity for it, at least not that my friend and I could find.

What was supposed to be the big rally today in front of the Philadelphia
Museum of Art was mainly a bunch of 20-something, neo-hippie wannabes
who hadn't showered in three or four weeks. One girl was being interviewed
by a reporter, and was saying things, "Well, yeah, so like, we think their...they
shouldn't...their opinions are like, you know, bad..."

Does not help our cause, I'm afraid. I guess that's why,
as my friend reminded me, hippies got "Clean for Gene."

A few interesting things, though.

First of all, a columnist in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer wrote this about a man
who'd been camped out in front of his house in a van for the last few days:

"My wife wondered if we should call the police. I had the same thought,
until I remembered what happened to two people the night before who had
wandered into an abandoned lot in attempt to get a good view of the fireworks.
The police detained them for questioning for several hours, apparently
thinking they were associated with the protesters."

So apparently protesters are being detained for no reason.
All part of the GOP's big tent policy, I guess.

And today when we were on South Street, we saw a large group of cops standing
around talking, and just then a reporter was coming down the street with his
video camera. The cops started waving their hands and covering their faces,
laughing and saying, "Oh no, a camera, a camera!"

And finally, the progressive paper in Philly had a great headline this morning.
The name of the paper is The Philadelphia Weekly, I think. Hard to remember.
I read it over breakfast on only about 3 hours of sleep.
Anyway, the headline read:

There goes the neighborhood!
Lock up your wives and children -- The Republicans are in town.

So there's my report.
Not as exciting as a phone call asking you to bail me out, but I tried.