Paris Alston: This is GBH’s Morning Edition. Today marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the 2004 Democratic National Convention, which took place here in Boston. GBH political reporter Adam Reilly covered the convention at the time and joins us now for a look back. Adam, good morning. Thanks for being here.
Adam Reilly: Good morning. Oh my pleasure. Happy to do it.
Alston: So when you think back to this time, what stands out?
Reilly: The first thing I remember is that the convention introduced Barack Obama to a national audience. I was there in the Fleet Center, which is what the TD Garden used to be called, when Obama gave the keynote speech for the convention. And before he started, most of us who were there did not know who he was or what to expect. And then we watched as this incredibly young-looking senator from Illinois stepped to the podium and gave what is now remembered as one of the great political speeches in U.S. history.
Barack Obama [archival audio]: If there is a child on the South Side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs, and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poor, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.
Reilly: And regarding that last line, remember: All this is happening three years after 9/11 and near the start of the second war in Iraq.
Alston: Yes, certainly a lot of implications even to this day. And this was also a big year, particularly for Massachusetts, because then-U.S. Senator John Kerry became the presidential nominee. How did that moment play out?
Reilly: Well, as you say, Kerry, of course, was accepting the nomination in his hometown, and he got a rapturous response from the audience. A huge part of Kerry’s political identity was that he had both fought in the Vietnam War, and also been a harsh critic of that war. The big thing that stood out in Kerry’s speech at the time, and it still stands out in retrospect, was the way he began it by putting his military service front and center.
John Kerry [archival audio]: Thank you. Thank you. I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.
Reilly: And as Kerry said that, he saluted the audience. Right after Kerry’s speech, a lot of pundits thought he had done a terrific job. But in hindsight, military matters actually ended up becoming a weakness for Kerry. He was hit with some highly dishonest attacks by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. And he also struggled to explain some nuanced and seemingly contradictory stances he’d taken on the war in Iraq. When I listen to the beginning of his speech now, it sounds like a portent of what’s to come.
Alston: And of course, he went on to not win the presidency that year, and ---
Reilly: He did not.
Alston: The question of where people could protest at the convention also loomed large until just days before it started here in Boston. How did that end up being resolved?
Reilly: The 2004 DNC was one of the first big national security events after 9/11. People who planned to protest the convention wanted, for obvious reasons, to be able to be at the Fleet Center as delegates and the media came and went. The government wanted to be able to confine them to a restricted area, to a caged-in protest pen.
Ultimately, the government squared off in court with the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild, and the court ended up splitting the difference. It did allow the creation of a so-called protest zone under a highway overpass downtown. But the court also said the protesters could march from Boston Common to the convention and end their march in a place where they’d be seen and heard by delegates and the media. Carol Rose of the ACLU of Massachusetts says this basically created the model that’s been used at conventions in the 20 years since.
Carol Rose: It was a seminal moment, right? Because the government was hoping that what they could do — and this was primarily the Secret Service — was trying to push everybody into a protest pen. And instead of being — we didn’t win the right to change the protest pen, but we did win the right to march past the convention center so that their message could be seen and heard by their intended audience.
Reilly: And Rose points out, this is actually going to be the setup at the DNC in Chicago next month: Confine protest in a designated protest space, but also a march that lets protesters make their presence felt more strongly.
Alston: Some little-known kind of impact there, 20 years later. Who would have known it dated back to then. So Adam, obviously happening here in Boston, this convention had to have had some implications for what was going on on the ground. What were they?
Reilly: Well, among other things, the convention was a star turn for Tom Menino, who was the mayor of Boston at the time. I was talking with Peter Kadzis, our emeritus political editor. He was actually my editor at the time at the Boston Phoenix. We were reminiscing about the convention, and Peter reminded me that on a logistical level, the convention actually worked out a lot better than some people had expected — just in terms of navigability of the city, ordinary life being able to go on at the same time that the convention was. And Peter said that that ended up giving Menino a huge political boost.
Peter Kadzis: The conventional wisdom when he first brokered the idea, mentioned the idea, of having a convention in Boston was met with skepticism everywhere. The fact that he pulled it off was an incredible feather in his cap. And I think, after that, Menino’s overall competence was rarely questioned.
Reilly: Menino, some of our listeners, many of our listeners will remember, was a legendary retail politician. He went on to become Boston’s longest-serving mayor and retired in 2014, 20 years after taking office. He passed away later that year.
Alston: So, Adam, what can this monumental moment teach us about politics today?
Reilly: One of the things that stands out to me, another one of the things that stands out to me looking back, is how much the texture of the political landscape can change in 20 years. Boston now has its first female mayor and first mayor of color, Michelle Wu. Mitt Romney was governor at the time — now, Maura Healey is our first female and our first lesbian governor. We’ve got the first female attorney general of color in Andrea Campbell, the first congresswoman of color, female congresswoman of color, in Ayanna Pressley. And Elizabeth Warren is the first female senator from Massachusetts. So in terms of diversity in political representation, Massachusetts has come an incredibly long way in those two decades.
Alston: And the party could certainly push that even forward, more forward, depending on what happens with the likely presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris in Chicago at the DNC. Well, that was GBH’s Adam Reilly. Adam, thank you so much.
Reilly: Thanks, Paris. Good to talk to you.
Alston: You’re listening to GBH News.
Twenty years ago, the 2004 Democratic National Convention began in Boston.
The momentous event introduced Barack Obama to a national audience, led to new protest standards and helped usher in shifts in the political landscape here in Massachusetts.
Obama, then a relatively unknown state senator from Illinois, delivered the keynote speech. Before he got on stage, many people did not know what to expect. Obama himself addressed that his “presence on this stage is pretty unlikely.”
It’s now remembered as one of the great political speeches in U.S. history.
“If there’s a child on the South Side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me even if it’s not my child,” Obama said at the time. “If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs and having to choose between medicine and the rent — that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.”
Two days later, on July 29, 2004, U.S. Sen. John Kerry accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president on stage in his hometown.
The big thing that stood out in his speech was how he began it: “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.”
A huge part of Kerry’s political identity was that he’d both fought in the Vietnam War — and also been a harsh critic of that war.
But in hindsight, military matters actually ended up becoming a weakness for Kerry. He was hit with some highly dishonest attacks by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. He also struggled to explain some nuanced, seemingly contradictory stances that he’d taken on the war in Iraq.
Now, the speech sounds like a portent of things to come.
The 2004 DNC was also the one of the first big national security events after the Sept. 11 attacks. It created a model that’s been used at conventions in the decades since — including at the DNC in Chicago next month.
Protesters wanted to be at TD Garden — then known as the FleetCenter — to have their message heard as delegates and the media came and went. The government wanted to be able to confine them to a restricted area. Ultimately, the government squared off in court with the ACLU and the National Lawyers’ Guild, and a federal judge ended up splitting the difference: creating a “protest zone” but also allowing a march.
“The government was hoping that what they could do — it was basically the Secret Service — was try to push everybody into a protest pen,” recalled Carol Rose of the ACLU of Massachusetts. “We didn’t win the right to change the protest pen. But we did win the right to march past the convention center, so that their message could be seen and heard by their intended audience.”
The convention made waves locally , too, boosting then-Boston Mayor Tom Menino. On a logistical level, the convention turned out better than some people had expected.
“The conventional wisdom when he first brokered the idea, mentioned the idea, of having a convention in Boston was met with skepticism everywhere,” said Peter Kadzis, GBH News’ emeritus political editor. “The fact that he pulled it off was an incredible feather in his cap.”
Menino went on to become Boston’s longest-serving mayor, holding the role for five terms. He retired in 2013 for health reasons, and passed away in 2014.
The political landscape in Boston, and Massachusetts broadly, has changed dramatically. One sign of change is the diversity in its elected representatives. Boston now has its first elected female mayor of color in Michelle Wu, and Massachusetts has its first female attorney general of color in Andrea Campbell, its first congresswoman of color in Ayanna Pressley, and its first female senator in Elizabeth Warren. In the governor’s office, Massachusetts has its first elected female governor, and the nation’s first lesbian governor, in Maura Healey.
