NOTE: All the photos from my Concord Road Trip have been posted to flickr; there are many more pictures for you to view at that link
As I drove the short distance from the NHTI campus to downtown Concord, I formulated my plan: take a brief stroll along the main street (helpfully, it’s Main Street, to avoid any confusion), keep an eye out for potentially interesting places to visit, and decide on a place for lunch. Approaching the intersection where I-93 dumps into downtown, I saw a huge red banner on the far corner. Inching through the traffic, I was finally able to make out a group of men, all wearing red sashes and bearing signs.
I’d heard briefly on the local morning news that the New Hampshire State Senate would be holding hearings on legalizing gay marriage, so it didn’t surprise me once I could read the signs. As it stands right now, New Hampshire recognizes gay marriages that are performed elsewhere, but on the heels of the approvals in Iowa and, more significantly, Vermont, politicians in New Hampshire are looking to take advantage of the situation. Particularly in the three northern New England states, the political landscape is closely tied to the physical landscape: the more densely populated urban corner of Southern New Hampshire skews liberal, while the rural and sparsely-populated northern corner is not only dyed-in-the-wool Republican, but hardcore conservative. Maine also has a similar north-south divide, and Vermont, which looks like New Hampshire flipped upside down, has liberals in the north, where Burlington is located.
I was also not surprised that nearly every other car that passed the protesters honked their support. Though I suppose a few people were actually honking because of the traffic, there was no doubt that these red-sashed gay-bashers had plenty of like-minded passers-by. I sat at the red light long enough to be able to take out my camera and snap the picture above and fight back the urge to scream “Fuck you!” at the top of my lungs as I finally drove past. Just as well, for at that moment one of them started to play the bagpipes, which, along with the horn-honking, would have drowned me out.
Parking was a challenge, but, having spent plenty of time cruising for a parking spot in Boston, Cambridge, and the like, I thought little of it. I assumed that it would be busy simply because the state legislature was in session AND it was lunch hour. Considering the density of traffic, I was mentally preparing for having to head elsewhere and try again later, but then lucked into a spot on a side street.
You can always identify the downtown of a small New England city: brick buildings mainly from the mid-to-late 19th century that may have been anything from mills to factories to warehouses to retail blocks, but ceased serving their original intended function sometime in the 1930s and sat derelict for 50 years. Rejuvenated in the 1980s as little boutiques, restaurants, and other shops, they are once again empty or have turned into “revolving-door” storefronts as all those little businesses were weakened by shopping malls and then killed off once and for all by Wal-Mart. Compared to some other New England cities I can think of, Concord has actually done better in hanging on to more open businesses than closed ones. There were a fair number of storefronts with papered-up windows and “For Lease” signs, but obviously having the regular clientele of state office workers keeps the registers ringing.
Approaching the State House, I had already made note of a couple of possible eating spots when I noticed one of those large inflatable “dancing men” in front of the capitol. My immediate assumption, when I noticed a group of people in identical purple t-shirts milling about, was that I had stumbled upon the pro-gay marriage group, wisely placed several blocks away from their red-robed enemies. Instead, it was a small group of people representing the SEIU, which is the union representing public sector employees such as firemen and police.
Just to show what strange bedfellows politics are, the SEIU organizers were at the State House to demonstrate against a proposed statewide budget cut of $100 million in pay and benefits for public workers. But the couple of dozen SEIU people were totally drowned out by their protesting compatriots: about 500 “Teabaggers” right in front of the building on the lawn, protesting whatever the hell they happened to be protesting about.
Yep, I had walked right into the middle of a teeming horde of right-wing wackjobs! Hundreds of ‘em, everywhere you looked. I’d heard about the gay marriage thing, but, since I don’t watch Fox News, I had no idea about the nationwide demonstrations they had orchestrated. Once again, I mis-identified the group from a distance, assuming they were probably MORE anti-gay-marriage people, but as soon as I could make out a few of the handmade signs, I put two and two together (which is apparently more than most of those teabaggers are capable of).
The teabaggers and the SEIU people both had signage about respecting the rights of the taxpayers, and there were even some SEIU people mixed in with the teabaggers. I suppose in the heat of the moment, a protest is a protest, and it doesn’t really matter WHAT you’re protesting about, as long as you’re shouting together. That’s especially true of the teabaggers, who seeme to be more of a catch-all for whatever gripe anyone might have had, as long as it was about Barack Obama. Later, as I saw a lot of coverage about the teabagger events all over the country, the people in Concord seemed fairly restrained by comparison, but let’s just say anyone with a screwdriver would have have plenty of work tightening things up for people.
I took a few surreptitious photos, but I could all too easily imagine some right-wing enforcer types (oh, yes, they were there) deciding I was one of “them” (you know the fascists, or socialists, or black supremacists, or whoever they’re againsy) and giving me trouble, so I extricated myself from the group and headed back out to the sidewalk.
Over in the opposite corner from the SEIU protesters, these three ladies had one sad little card table and a couple of hand-lettered posterboards. They were the token liberals of the day, surrounded by all these loud, overbearing right-wingers, quietly asking people to sign a petition to Congress to work with President Obama to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and realign the federal budget to provide better health care, a strong environmental policy, and more education to all Americans…you know, that dangerous un-American pinko crap. The stuff that more than two-thirds of the American public strongly supports in poll after poll. We chatted, I did their “penny poll” (they even provided the pennies!), and we agreed it was too nice a day to spend hanging out with loud-mouthed loonies. So I signed their petition, took their picture for posterity, and bade them farewell.
Tomorrow – Part III, or “What I Had For Lunch”
