Protesters give no help to clueless reporter

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press August 3, 2000

By THOMAS FRANCIS
Valley Press Staff Writer

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. - If you've read about the wild protesters bogging downtown Philadelphia during the Republican National Convention, and you want to know what their gripe is, I'm sorry to say that you won't find an explanation here.

I did my best. I found throngs of them demonstrating in a park at the corner of Race and Seventh streets. I listened to them, watched them and talked to them, but left with no more clue than when I arrived.

As I arrived, several of them were dressed in brown vests and crudely fashioned donkey heads from which their faces projected.

Their leader, a donkey-headed Morgan FitzPatrick, screamed to onlookers and sundry media that his cohorts who were arrested the day before "spent eight hours in stinking buses, weren't given the right to lawyers, weren't read their rights."

He added that, upon arriving at jail, they were "hog-tied and stripped naked."

In fact, so many were hauled off in Tuesday demonstrations that FitzPatrick claims that his friends were "being taken to prisons because jails were so full of people who speak up for their First Amendment rights."

This last point inspired a chant of "Free the puppet people!" accompanied by the beating of hand-held drums, the blowing of wooden flutes and a frenzied, clearly improvised style of dance.

I called one dancer away from the mix and inquired about FitzPatrick's statements. Here is the text of that conversation:

TF: How many of your fellow demonstrators were arrested?

Answer: A lot. I don't know. What do you mean arrested?

TF: Taken off to jail, you know, handcuffed, locked up?

Answer: I don't understand the question.

TF (exasperated): Well, what is your objection? Do you disagree with the police officers' tactics? Were they too rough? Are you saying there was police brutality?

Answer: What do you mean tactics? I don't understand the question. I don't know what you are talking about.

Like I said, I did my best, but these people weren't giving me a lot of help.

As for their cause, all I can tell you is that they carried signs asking someone to "Free Mumia," whoever he is, and "avenge Shaka Sankefe."

Tracking W. Bush

If you read Tuesday's travel journal, you will remember that I was part of an exclusive audience with civil rights champion Rev. Jesse Jackson. For a moment Wednesday I thought I was to come into close contact with Gov. George W. Bush, who was rumored to have arrived in Philadelphia.

When I called Frank Visco for comment on the other of today's articles, he began to tell me, with no shortage of enthusiasm, something that included the words "president" and "Bush." I didn't hear the rest because his cellular phone faded in and out, but I asked the only question that mattered to me: "Where?"

"At the Political Fest!" an exuberant Visco replied.

I dashed out of the hotel and hailed a cab: "To the convention center," I told the cabbie. "I've heard Bush is at Political Fest."

When I arrived I boasted to a cameraman that I had heard "Bush is in the building." He was skeptical, though, and didn't follow me.

Entering the Political Fest, I found a host of fellow out-oftowners touring mock-ups of the Oval Office, the presidential helicopter and other such Executive Office perks.

I did not find Bush the former president nor Bush the presidential candidate. I called Visco from a nearby pay phone.

He explained to me that Bush was not at the Political Fest and that he was actually had been telling me about a photo in the President George Bush Library.

The photo shows Bush behind a desk with former Gov. Pete Wilson on a couch and Visco in a chair in the center of the photo, which had been taken aboard Air Force One.

It may not have been the president in the flesh, but it was still a remarkable discovery by Visco, who was touring the presidential library when he suddenly saw his own face:

"I was stunned. I said 'Damn! That's me,' " Visco said. "Some people next to me said, 'Hey, that is you.' "

Visco said the photo was taken during a GOP fund-raiser in California when he was chairman of the state Republican Party.