Democracy in action at Democratic convention, Miller says

Kathleen E. Miller, a senior research scientist at UB’s Research Institute on Addictions and a Bernie Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention, returned home from Philadelphia amazed by the event she had just been a part of.

“It was four days of sight and sound,” Miller says. “And a little surreal.”

The experience was exciting, but often contentious. “In a sense, there were two different conventions going on,” Miller tells the UB Reporter. “I think that for the Hillary delegates, this was a victory celebration; for the Bernie delegates, it was an ongoing fight for the soul of democracy. There were a lot of protest chants alongside the cheers and applause.

“All of us who were Bernie delegates went there determined to make ourselves heard and do the job we had been appointed to do,” she says. “It was a fast-paced four days and we wanted to get something done, but it was absolutely exhausting.”

The delegates’ days started early, Miller says. “Each state had their hotel. At 7:30 each morning, you would go and get your credentials, followed by a mandatory delegate breakfast. During the early part of the day there were a variety of caucuses and workshops sponsored by the Democratic Party or by other progressive groups. Then you would head over to the convention site from about three in the afternoon to well after midnight,” she says.

“You wouldn’t get back until about two o’clock in the morning, so by the end of the week the sleep deficit was really prodigious.”

The opportunities for finding interesting eateries in the area of the convention were many, Miller says, adding that most delegates were successful in locating restaurants so they could have food choices in addition to those offered in the Wells Fargo Center.

“One of the things that I liked was the fact that our hotel was very close to the Reading Terminal Market, which is like a giant farmer’s market and bazaar,” she explains. “And it made for some very good meals — you can pretty much find anything there. They had a couple of stands that were run by the local Amish community, and they had wonderfully fresh items.”

Thousands of demonstrators flooded the streets of Philadelphia during the convention, marching to express concerns about such issues as climate change, poverty and electoral reform.

“Certainly our people, for Bernie, made our message heard,” Miller says. “But there were no violent confrontations. I was pleased and proud of our demonstrators.”

She also says she was impressed by how all of it was handled by the city.

“The police were astonishing. They were non-confrontational at all times, from what I saw. As I understand it, there were about 100 citations handed out, total, for the week. It could have been very oppressive and it was not. It was, the way I think democracy should work, when it is taken to the streets.”

Miller notes the atmosphere was even more energetic inside the Wells Fargo Center. She remains proud of how the nearly 1,900 Sanders delegates got their messages out to the convention and the world.

“Some went the extra mile,” she says. “There was a guy who had made a jacket with ‘Feel the Bern’ in LED lights sewn into the jacket, and it lit up! I sat on a panel with him during one media session and he had it lit. His was my favorite of many different and imaginative outfits that were worn every day to the convention and during the floor sessions.”

Then there were the signs.

“There was just an ocean of signs, as you no doubt saw if you watched any of the television coverage of the convention,” Miller says. “And they were split, it seemed, between official signs sponsored by the DNC and homemade ones snuck in by delegates trying to get their message out — and on TV, if they could, but also in front of specific speechmakers.

“That, and peering through the signs — there was just a forest of them,” she says. “The runners would come through every half-hour or so with a different sign that all delegates were urged to hold up during the speeches: ‘Here’s your Hillary sign. Here’s your ‘Stronger Together’ sign. Here’s your Bernie sign. Here’s your Joe sign.’

“Sometimes, from the floor, they even blocked out the Jumbotron.”

One of the other odd elements of being at the convention was the constant attention from the media, Miller says, noting it was not an experience that most of the delegation were used to.

“You didn’t want to be sitting anywhere near the aisle because if you were, you couldn’t listen to the speeches without someone with a microphone saying, ‘Could we talk to you for just a few minutes?’

“And not just on the convention floor. If you walked around on the streets wearing your credential — as many of us did — you would usually have several media people stop you before you got to the hotel or the restaurant or wherever it was that you were going.”

Miller says that for many delegates, the fast-paced activity level and the high-energy atmosphere during the main speeches in the evenings all contributed to the feeling of being in a marathon.

“When you got to your seat — by the time I would get to my seat — by and large, I stayed right there.”

Looking back, Miller says that despite her disappointment that Sanders was not nominated, she was very pleased to have been there.

“I felt that I and the other Bernie delegates were able to play an important role in shaping the Democratic platform and changing the superdelegate system.

“I was not surprised by the outcome,” she says. “But, we got something out of it. Ultimately, we have to go forward together. Democracy is a work-in-progress.”