philadelphia day six

the previous day had been a rough one and though we had to be up early again for breakfast, wednesday morning began with a slow start.

from my perspective, the most important parts of the convention had already taken place and, admittedly, my enthusiasm was beginning to wane. there wasn’t much, as best as we could tell, a whole lot going on at the arena of note prior to the primetime speakers, so a lot of us spent much of the day doing progressive, non-convention-related stuff: attending trainings, forums, protests, etc.

for my part, myself and a friend decided to attend some forums in the city being put on by progressive democrats of america. if memory serves, which is always questionable, the forum was on progressive budget alternatives. it’s a topic both my friend and i have been interested in for some time and had, in previous years, attempted to publicize here in hawaii (to little effect). however, for reasons also escaping my recollection, we never made it to the forum despite having paid for it. i think we were distracted and preoccupied talking to fellow progressives and just lost track of time.

still, the day still had promise as there was scheduled a democratic socialists of america (DSA) event at the same location. i was pretty excited about it…. in the meantime, we grabbed a bite to eat at a nearby deli and had lots of good conversations with various progressive activists and democratic socialists. a great way to spend a morning!

shortly after signing in for the DSA event and finding a couple of seats, we received a text message from the bernie campaign about a candidate and campaign training that had just been added to the day’s schedule and was going to start within the hour. after a bit of deliberation, my friend and i agreed it made sense to try and hoof it across town to be at the training with our fellow bernie supporters and progressive activists. and so, with some disappointment, we left before the DSA event got started and made our way back to the vicinity of the convention center.

…only we got a bit turned around. or, as my friend would certainly point out, i got us turned around. and i didn’t realize my mistake right away, rather more like after 20 minutes in the opposite direction. so we did our best to hurry back in the right direction, trying to find our way to a bus or subway stop that would get us to our destination. we did eventually make it, but we were quite late (and very hot and dehydrated). and then the training itself turned out, at least for me, to be not very useful. so it goes.

after the training was over, we walked over to reading market for some coffee and food as we mapped out our plan for the rest of the afternoon. while there, we bumped into some other hawaii bernie delegates and ended up just hanging around the market until it was time for us to make our way to the wells fargo center for primetime.

we had been warned that because the president was going to be in attendance, security was going to be much tighter and after a certain time we might not be admitted at all. and as had become typical of the DNC, none of those rumors turned out to be true….

despite president obama’s arguable failures in any number of areas of domestic policy and his utter warmongering foreign policy, it’s hard not to listen to him speak and… like him. he’s a hell of an orator.

i found myself, at more than one point during his speech, thinking how much i liked him and was so disappointed “this guy” hadn’t turned up to run the country.

while obama’s speech was the most memorable, i have to say vice president biden and clinton’s VP nominee, tim kane, did pretty well too.

the president finished his speech to a standing ovation and cheers. and while there was still one more day of the convention remaining, i didn’t know at the time that wouldn’t be back the following day.

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