No Matter Our Past Cross-Purpose

By far the loudest and longest cheers and applause of the day erupted with calls for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, and a two-state solution.

US Rep. Jim McGovern was the first to make the call, and Massachusetts US senators Ed Markey and Liz Warren both amplified it in barn-burning speeches. 

Warren ramped it up:  “Netanyahu cannot bomb his way to peace!” Riding the roar of the crowd, she raised her voice yet more: “Donald Trump & Benjamin Netanyahu cannot be anywhere near leadership positions!”

Massachusetts Democrats called it a state convention, but with a single nomination to make and one unopposed candidate to choose, it was a rally.

Coincidentally, it was a rally on the same Saturday that saw many Pride rallies and parades across the nation, and those folks were well-represented on Worcester’s DCN stage, first by Democratic Party Chair Steven Kerrigan, later by Gov. Maura Healy, and my guess is by others, but why would I keep count? Diversity, equity, and inclusion were emphasized by all speakers regardless of preference.

My employers back in Newburyport marched in a Pride parade and were joined by, of all people, my landlords for a “The Screening Room” contingent bearing a rainbow flag. They and a few other mutual friends all posed for smiling photos. Conspicuous in his absence was the old geezer who has projected films there since 1998.

Only because I was among the seven delegates sent to Worcester by the town of Newbury where we joined over 2,000 others.

Planning on the breakfast hosted by Sen. Warren and the AFL-CIO, I arrived as soon as the doors opened in hopes of mingling with people from around the state for as long as I could. A fellow with an “Azorean Maritime Heritage Society” t-shirt, turned out to be an annual reader in the Portuguese version of the Moby-Dick marathon in New Bedford.

Three women from Mansfield and Foxboro were amused by my endorsement of the almond croissants at White’s Bakery, but their talk of the previous day’s news proved they were more concerned with counts than with calories. Their listing of a few of the 34 lit a bulb, and I spilled out the light:

The reason that individual counts are never mentioned is that none of his supporters claim he’s innocent of anything, just that he’s immune.

One replied immediately:

Right! That he’s above the law without using the phrase ‘above the law”-

Another:

Or admitting to it!

The third:

That’s why it’s no exaggeration when we say democracy is on the ballot.

Me:

But I still want to know if those croissants are legal!

Well, you have to lighten up now and then to keep things moving. The person I hoped to run into more than any other was Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll, former mayor of Salem. Wanted so much to ask her if she recalled a 2007 incident when a Salem busker got into a feud with the city police. She never involved herself personally, but did assign an assistant, one Jason Silva, to solve the issue amicably. He did what he could, but I’m pretty well convinced that the real solution came with phone calls from the ACLU to Salem City Hall. All I wanted to do yesterday was see the expression on her face when I told her I was that busker.

Instead, I turned around from getting a refill from the tank of coffee and came face to face with a former mayor of Newburyport. She gave me a huge smile and a hello as happy as a trip to Hawaii. Couldn’t have been more off-guard than if I had been suddenly face-to-face with Barack Obama. Couldn’t help but smile back and exchange the hello, before letting her and the folks with her, including a few faces I recognized, know that I was representing the town of Newbury after so many years of a tagline in the local paper that says I’m a resident of “Plum Island,” so that people would think I was a resident of Newburyport.

They liked the joke, and she resumed laughing. I walked away quite relieved and with a nagging feeling of guilt. From 2013 through 2017, I wrote at least a dozen columns savaging Mayor Donna Holaday. One began by declaring that Newburyport didn’t have a mayor, but a broker. She could have brokered my nose when I turned from the coffee tank, and I’d have deserved it. Instead, a warm smile, a huge greeting, and so I felt like a snake. Still do.

But life goes on, and our common purpose, no matter our past cross-purpose, was a focus on November. While an end to Netanyahu’s war on Gaza gained the loudest cheers, unions and jobs drew the most attention.

Chrissy Lynch of the AFL-CIO emphasied labor’s “big tent, but shared values.” Boasting of Biden’s best-ever record of job creation, “union jobs to rebuild the middle class,” and lowest unemployment rate in over 50 years, she noted how Republicans always harp on false choices such as taxing the rich or having corporate profits “trickle down.” She applied that to affordable housing and infrastructure. “America is not an either-or place,” she proclaimed to a rolling applause. “Corporate profits,” she insisted, “are the real reason for inflation.”

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu reinforced Lynch’s endorsement by telling us that every one of Biden’s cabinet secretaries, the First Lady, and Biden himself have visited Boston to plan for improvements in infrastructure, health, and education.

Education was another recurring theme. Especially the Republicans’ “2025 Report” which several speakers attacked as a “dangerous” descent back into the Dark Ages. Most representative was Worcester Mayor Joe Petty’s description of it an erasure of history for the purpose of repeating it. McGovern, Markey, and Warren nailed it just as forcefully.

After dancing onto the stage, State Treasurer Deb Goldberg pledged to fight corporations on  the issue of climate change and their treatment of workers. As if answering Lynch’s “false choice” claim, Goldberg noted that there are many well-paying union jobs to be had in the field of clean energy.

Overall, one-liners from each speaker captured both the purpose and attitude of the event:

McGovern, after a roaring laugh when he described the futility of working with “MAGA morons”: “We don’t govern to win, we win to govern.” And, “We stand for something. Trump stands for nothing.”

Healy: “Republicans have anger, hatred, fear, and alternate reality. We have the truth.”

Attorney General Andrea Campbell making a case that empathy, while all-important, is useless without action: “This is the time to get political.”

Markey, citing the wrecking ball character of the Trump Administration, and the convicted felon’s pitch to oil companies that he will wipe out all regulations for billion dollar donations: “If he wins, he won’t appoint a cabinet, but a cartel.”

Later: “They say ‘Drill, Baby, Drill!’ but we say, ‘Plug in, Baby, Plug in.'” Then he added mention of his Green New Deal co-sponsored by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose name drew a huge cheer: “We have an American climate corps of 20,000 young people… We don’t agonize, we organize.”

And for a parting shot: “Donald Trump has 34 problems and being rich ain’t one of them.”

Because she’s up for re-election, Warren closed the show, beginning with an acknowledgment of Trump’s two “signature accomplishments” as president: “An extremist Supreme Court to repeal Roe v. Wade and tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.” Laughter turned to cheers when she added: “And you sent me to tax the rich!”

She repeated and re-inforced all of the above themes. One that she added, both when she addressed us during breakfast in the morning and in the last hurrah, was a call for statehood for the District of Columbia. Each time it was bare mention, but well-worth noting since it hasn’t been mentioned since before the pandemic. Even then it was deep down the Dems’ wish-list, but if Democrats hold the senate and flip the house for Biden, it may have a shot.

She also joined all other speakers in calling the November presidential election a choice between “the most union-friendly president in our history versus the most divisive and dangerous.”

She neglected to add the third choice of the guy who says he has a dead worm in his brain. Or is it a worm in his dead brain? None of the speakers mentioned him. Just as well, the constant references to “the convicted felon” provided as much humor as we needed to keep things moving.

When she asked us if we recalled how “every week was infrastructure week during the convicted felon’s four years in office,” she held up her a hand to each side and mimicked soundless yakking. Laughter was nearly as loud as the cheers for ending the war on Gaza.

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