Abstract

Lead Balloons

The article offers a firsthand look at the preparation of Boston, Massachusetts, for the Democratic National Convention of 2004. I am in Boston for the time being, visiting my parents and watching the city ready itself for the Democratic National Convention. It takes bravery to participate actively in any democracy, when you come right down to it. We have lost some of our sense of the centrality of the electoral process in the years since the height of the civil rights movement; we have grown more cynical, perhaps, some might say more corrupt, and now, most certainly, afraid. If the threat of terrorism were not enough, both the Democratic and Republican national conventions will be important testing grounds for civil liberties. New rules purport to allow searches of subway riders without probable cause. Indeed, under the U.S. Patriot Act, civil disobedience is actually conflated with terrorism. The President George W. Bush Administration has floated the "doomsday" possibility of delaying the presidential election if there is a terrorist strike, even as Homeland Security assures us that the question is not if but when. Suspending a federal election would require rewriting our election law.