First off, huge cigarette people are wandering around, like seven or eight feet tall, painted red flattops, frowning eyes, long, white bodies. Reminding one of... Margaret Meade style totem figures... kind of frightening, but kind of funny, too. Wrong, Danial, lung cancer is not funny.
Then, there is a huge chain of death stretched out along the K Street edge of the lot, maybe fifteen people each holding linked corners of banners to their left and right, composing a long succession of signs... each ten-foot long, three-foot high banner full of photographs and names of the victims of tobacco.
As the speaking begins, many of the Mr. Buttheads climb up onto the stage - ah, yes, see the photo I just took?
{[(**--Future Foto Upload Under Construction.--**)]}
Now the chain of signs begins to move, slowly winding its way forward to the stage, like a train of death on the move, its gondolas of cancer coupled together by human links, progressing slowly, steadily, toward the speakers' platform....
Effective. Scarey. I am not going to light a cigarette.
Carlos Martinez and Daniel Leo Rivera (mi tocante), representing NOTIMEX from across the border, ask me questions in Spanish about the protest zone. I babble in Spanish. Every tenth word I have to stop and ask them how to say something. I don't dare try to write down our conversation - had enough trouble just saying it!
I sit for a few minutes, writing this. Then....
"Oh, look at this, Mary!"Two ladies arrive at the table, begin fingering my little ceramic elephants.
"Where did you get these? Can we have them?"
"No! I'm giving one to my mother, and keeping the other."
"But where did you get them?"
"I don't know. Someone just left them here yesterday."
"Oh, you've got to give us one, at least! Come on...."
"Mary, maybe you can trade him something for them?"
The two women lift their canvas bags onto the table, and start rummaging through them. I understand now. They have been wandering the streets, gathering up their hordes of souvenirs. Even their bags are decorated with some damn Convention slogan. "Oh, what do we have here... pins? You want a pin?"
"No. I'm not a pin fanatic."
"Here... the official Republican Kraft Macaroni and Cheese... no, you wouldn't want -"
"Oh yes I would," I almost shout, "is that the real one, with macaroni in shapes of stars and elephants?"
"Yes it is. Here, I'll trade you my box for your elephant."
"Done."
Yes! Now I can give my mom a box of the delegates' special edition Macaroni & Cheese!
"Danial, those two were something else, eh?""Yeah. Did you see the bags they were toting around?"
"Well, you made them happy. Where did your little elephants come from, anyway?"
"I donno. I was writing yesterday and someone just came by and left them in front of me. I looked up and said thank you, but they were leaving. Wish I knew who it was. They are cute, aren't they?"
"Better put that last one away, or it will never get to your mom!"
"Heh heh."
His radio squawks. He listens, and somehow makes sense out of all the garbling static and voices. "The march is getting close. They'll be here in half an hour."
"This is the Chicanos?"
"Yeah. Mexican-Americans, Latinos, whatever. Going to be a big crowd." He smiles, a bit tensely, "You know, some of those guys have been walking for the last month, all the way from Sacramento? A group of marchers went by this morning, on the way to meet them, remember? They've been rallying all day over at Chicano Park. Now they are on their way here."
"The mediators are walking with them?"
"Yeah. Both the City people and the Feds. They say there are no problems."
"How many we expecting?"
"Maybe a thousand."
"Damn. That will be good, at last get some real crowds in here!"
"Yeah. What is it they're calling themselves?"
"Coalition for Social and Economic Justice."