Diversity hits the wall at the RNC

CLEVELAND – Here's a news flash for Donald Trump, the thousands of GOP delegates, the Bikers for Trump and all the other anti-immigrant-protection-barrier enthusiasts convening on the banks of Lake Erie this week:

America's already built the wall. Lots of them, in fact – especially here in Cleveland. Just look out your hotel window, or if you're Mr. Trump, just glance down on the insect-like masses and our streets from your posh helicopter.

To mark the arrival of the greatest show of democracy on earth, the streets of downtown Cleveland are criss-crossed with several miles of white concrete barriers and black metal fencing. It looks like the central city is hosting a giant Grand Prix race – occasionally I look up expecting to see Michael Schumacher rounding a curve at 175 mph.

Instead, you'll find scenes from an occupation – the soldiers in camouflage blocking the street in front of Cleveland police headquarters, the highway patrolmen from California or Florida marching down side streets in single file. The industrial-strength fencing, the checkpoints – we saw these in Philadelphia when the pope came to town. In security-obsessed America in 2016, these have become our bizarre way of signifying that, hey, we're having a party here!

But the real wall here in Cleveland is harder to penetrate than anything that Trump's wildest Tijuana border fantasies: The invisible barrier of diversity of both background and thought that Republicans have placed like a force field around the Quicken Loans Arena. For one thing, the appearance of several high-profile black speakers like Dr. Ben Carson and Milwaukee Sheriff David ("Blue Lives Matter!") Clarke is masking the fact that, according to longtime participants and several newspaper surveys, the number of African-American delegates at this GOP confab is the lowest in decades. That can happen when your nominee is polling a whopping 0 percent of the black vote in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

But from a real politick viewpoint, anyway, Republicans' failure to reach out to Latinos is even more glaring. During Tuesday's presidential roll call, I watched New Mexico's Gov. Susana Martinez rise to introduce her delegation and praise her state's "amazing culture of diversity." It certainly sounded like a read-between-the-lines dig at Trump, who'd said after Martinez balked at endorsing him that she's doing "a bad job." The delegates – and the nation – probably should have heard voices like Martinez, even if that cut into the time for the frequent anti-Hillary Clinton chants of "Lock Her Up!" Recent polls show Trump getting as little as 12 percent of the Latino vote, a recipe for November disaster.

Instead, Trump's fervent build-the-wall policy and his comments such as labeling Mexican migrants "rapists" has caused a counter-revolution that surged to the very edge of the security zone late Wednesday morning. About 50 activists with the group Mijente, a new Latino social organizing group, met at the aptly named Public Square and then paraded toward the "Q," up the cobblestones of narrow East 4^th where a man selling anti-Hillary parodies of Dr. Seuss books shouted "Get a job, you losers!"

In sight of the arena, as one cop watched from the high corner of a parking garage and scores of law-enforcement officers in navy blue or khaki lined both sides of the road, about 100 or more activists from groups such as Code Pink joined them. Soon, they lined the street with their banners painted to resemble brick or barbed-wire walls – "Wall Off Trump" – and chanted in Spanish and in English – "No papers, no fear!"

They stretched maybe 100 yards, many football fields short of their goal of encircling the arena. Few delegates would see them. Trump had already been nominated. But they felt that they could not be silent.

"Trump's rhetoric about building a wall affects me personally because he's building a wall around my family," said Iuscely Flores, a 20-year-old University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student who was brought to the United States from Durango, Mexico, undocumented, when she was just 4. She said as Chicana, her people were in North America before white settlers arrived. "This is my nation and I deserve to reclaim it."

Flores told me she thought the delegates would get their message, despite the security blockades. "They do see us everywhere – we're the ones in the background serving their food at their fancy restaurants. We're the ones without insurance – minimum wage jobs. We're the ones getting their $5 tips out of $200 plate."

A few feet away stood 27-year-old ex-Marine and Harlem resident Alexander McCoy, who once guarded embassies in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere and is now a leader of a "hashtag movement" called #VetsVsHate that formed in response to the rise of Trump. "We believe we are a country that is stronger because of our diversity," he said, "not weaker."

Inside Quicken Loans Arena, the Trump Train is barely staying on the tracks. But out in the streets, Cleveland has defied every expectation coming into this thing. The city police – who didn't have the world's greatest reputation for restraint – and their allies have been remarkably skilled at responding to any situation just in time and with just the right amount of force. It has been a medal-worthy so far.

The protests, meanwhile, have been smaller than predicted – banner headlines about how much tear gas and handcuffs have been purchased have a strange way of keeping folks home -- and mostly peaceful, except for a minor kerfuffle late Wednesday afternoon when a long-time Revolutionary Communist burned an American flag. But I spent some time in Public Square where scores of people voiced very opinion under the burning July son – a big "Queers Against Racism" banner on one side, anti-gay banners on the other – without coming to blows.

Instead, I overheard several spirited and peaceful conversations between liberal and conservatives, such as radio hosts Doc Thompson of Glenn Beck's conservative Blaze network and San Francisco liberal radio talker Harrison Chastang, who argued about murder rates, gun control, and President Obama's job performance and still walked away smiling.

At one point, a pro-gay-rights marcher with a tuba and a mildly obscene T-shirt got a non-hostile tap on the rear end with a protester's "Hillary for Prison" placard. "Hey," the sign-bearer exclaimed mildly, "people bring their kids to the Republican National Convention!"

It was either mildly amusing, or appalling. But it was democracy at its messy best. And in spite of all the dark America-is-doomed talk coming from a podium a half mile away, and in spite of the chilling effect of row after row of concrete barriers, it still found a beating pulse in Public Square.

Donald Trump should have been there to hear it all. Maybe somebody can hand his helicopter pilot the coordinates.