Dododreams

One week from tomorrow the Republican National Convention begins. It’ll be a flurry of feel-good rah-rah red white and blue go go McCain Americana… fine for those true believers but not so super as far as I’m concerned.

Beyond my on-going distaste for what the past seven-plus years of GOP administration have done to this country (not to mention other countries) I am not so thrilled about the convention because it’s going to be just a touch too up-close-and-personal for my taste.

How close, you ask? Check out this map.

Point A is the corner of the Excel Energy Center, at which it will be held.
Point B is the outer edge of the “secured zone”, into which no public transportation is allowed. As far as I can tell, no protesters either.
Point C is where I work.

Color me thrilled. Hopefully you won’t, in ten days or so, also color me teargassed and harrassed just trying to get to and from my job.

Now it was obviously known for quite some time that this event (and its expected 45,000 attendees, not including protesters, as well as 3,000 “security officers”) was coming to town. What to do about it on a corporate level has been discussed for over a year and a half. In fact, according to my ex-boss who was on the company’s planning committee, in the early stages one possibility was floated to close the 3 HQ buildings down for the week, and send everyone home on vacation (if they had the earned time off) or unpaid. There were some obvious problems with that, the biggest from the corporate perspective that you can’t just shut down the HQ for a 20,000+ employee firm, including most of the executive, operational, accounting, customer service and HR functions. The close-down possibility also didn’t address the personnel issues of forcing people to take unpaid time off which for all I know may be illegal in this state.

At any rate it was decided that the company would stay business as usual. In practical terms this means everyone who can possibly work from home is going to do so for those few days and not get caught up in potential (traffic, delegates, national news, protesters, cops) hassles.

Let me interject a question here: guess who has zero possibility of working from home? Bet you can answer that without much thought. It could well be that I won’t be alone with that though — the division’s Big Cheese had called one of his patented Mandatory Direct Report Meetings at which he may drop the hammer on everyone having to show up as a Divisional Sign of Solidarity. Hey, maybe the floor will be lucky and he’ll suspend his The Microwave Is Only For Heating Liquids Edict for the week so lunches can be warmed without leaving the floor. But I digress.

Back to the topic this whole convention thing worries me. What makes it worse on the stress-o-meter is that Tuesday is the first day of school for my kids which means I have to see the older two out the door to their respective buses (first time busing for R, it’s kind of a big deal) and deliver the youngest to her school program. In other words, no leaving for work extra-early to try to avoid crowds. Getting in and out of my parking ramp (adjoined to my building) worries me. The spycams that have recently been installed all over downtown St. Paul worry me; the 12-foot-high chain link fences surrounding the secured block around the Excel Center worry me; the planned protest of 20,000 people marching down the street in front of my office worries me; the thoughts of a police riot worry me. I am a democratic worrywart, ha ha.

On the other hand one of my co-workers who lives a bit off the upper left hand corner of that map thinks that this’ll all be “fun”. She’s looking forward to walking through the crowds on the way in. Maybe she has the right attitude. Maybe she’s hugely naive. Time shall tell.

I do plan on bringing my camera with me during the week so there may be real on-the-scene pictures from your all-too-local correspondent. In the meanwhile I will leave you with one that is not mine, a billboard that’s been erected down on 494 and Cedar, by the airport:

Oligarchy: (1) government by the few (2) a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes; also : a group exercising such control