By MAUREEN CALLAHAN
Posted: 3:21 am
August 24, 2008
Ask people who were there, and they will tell you that Barack Obama's candidacy is a direct descendant of the 1968 Democratic Convention: the intra-party fighting, the metastasizing anti-war movement, the campaign against poverty and for civil rights, the riots in Chicago's streets.
Aside from stripping party bosses of their grip (Dem candidate Hubert Humphrey, who had never competed in a single primary, was the backroom-brokered nominee, with Eugene McCarthy, the popular anti-war candidate, summarily dispatched), the fallout from the '68 convention ultimately resulted in the creation - irony of ironies - of superdelegates.
Today, with the country mired in an unpopular war and a worsening recession, one would assume that the emergence of a young, charismatic, popular nominee, the first black candidate for President, would result in an ecstatic exercise in party unity, a 40th anniversary celebration of what '68 wrought, optimistic and forward-looking.
One would be wrong.
"I think we'll blow out '68, dwarf it," says Glenn Spagnuolo, founder of the unfortunately named Recreate '68. At 37, Spagnuolo wasn't even alive during the 1968 Chicago convention, but that doesn't make him any less nostalgic for those days. Recreate '68 is coordinating with about 100 groups (including World Can't Wait and SDS) for four days of marching, puppetry, public nudity and street theater.
Speaking of: What is with the left's obsession with puppets and street theater? "Being pissed off and angry - that's not something that attracts many people," he says. "Having a smile on your face, having fun - that makes people feel good."
Spagnuolo does not want McCain to win but wants Obama to lose and does not see the contradiction inherent in this thinking. He does not think it ironic that he has adopted the Black Power symbol as his group's logo: "Black power will be expressed with our speakers at the protests," he says. "Barack Obama is not the first black man to run for president. He's the first black man that white America is willing to accept." (Spagnuolo is white.)
