Dallas still contrived to separate all protest from the delegates. Delegates were asked not to walk to the convention center, but to take special buses because there was supposedly no way to guarantee safety. And the designated "special event area" for ACORN's Monday morning rally at the convention center was out of night of the delegates going in. Behind a grassy knoll, in back of large trees, surrounded by fences, and watched by police on horses, the ACORN rally seemed to take place in a cage. The only moment of police-protestor confrontation for ACORN members took place when they sidestepped a line of police with readied batons to reach the delegate entrance.

But Dallas officials had played up the police and security precautions they were taking for weeks before the convention, receiving extensive local press coverage. In the wake of San Francisco's confrontations, much of the local population was scared off by rumored "shoot to kill" police orders. Blacks and Hispanics in Texas especially feared the Dallas police's reputation for a "shoot first ask questions later" behavior against minorities. One officer had just beer fired from the force, but community leaders said the firing was merely a cover-up to deflect criticism. And the week of the convention, police responded to minority criticism by saying: Of course minorities are shot by police more often; they shoot at us more often than others.

One white city councilman urged citizen to get involved in the shooting; he boasted of having participated in the shooting of two men he said were robbing a store. A coalition of Hispanic groups, upset by his insensitive incitement of citizens to shoot others, announced they would collect signatures to force a recall election.

Meanwhile Blacks condemned the Republican convention for not awarding any contracts to minority-owned businesses. A couple of days before the Republican Convention began, on a tour of the Convention Center with Republican fat cats the organizer of the Republican Convention came across a meeting including some city councilors. Spotting the convention organizer in the back of the room, a Black city councilman interrupted the session to challenge him on the minority contracting issue. In front of the media, the convention organizer took up the usual patronizing attitude, saying he was sorry the city councilman could not see things the way they really are.

Whites and Blacks on the city council feuded for weeks before the convention, with Blacks harshly criticizing police and city policies set by the white majority. In the bitter name-calling, some whites on the council complained that the Black city councilors were not fit for the job. The Black community responded to this by saying that white city leaders better back off, and not try to tell Blacks who their elected leaders should be.

After fighting with the city for a campsite, unsure of the direction the racial sparring would take, ACORN went ahead with plans to set up the Tent City, First, two massive gospel revival tents went up at the corner of the newly formed "Martin Luther King" and John J. Lewis streets. The Saturday afternoon before the Republicans came into town, ACORN held its own national convention.

There, Hanggi told the crowd that they were in Texas not only to get together and chant about how bad Reagan was, but to do some serious work. Everybody at the Tent City, along with another hundred allies, boarded a fleet of buses and vans Sunday morning and spread out over the poor neighborhoods of Dallas. Going door to door in groups of two along carefully mapped out "turfs", the Tent City dwellers registered over 12,000 new voters in Dallas. The largest single-day voter registration drive in the history of Texas was not short-lived either. Back at camp, there was great enthusiasm when Hanggi asked: "Will we be at the welfare offices? "Yes," cried the crowed. "Will we be at the shopping counters? Will we be at the schools registering 18 year-olds? Will we go door to door to door to door in our neighborhoods?" Yes.

Nancy Riggings, an older, quiet, poor Black woman from Fort Worth had a horrible Sunday. She had been unable to register a single voter in three hours because everyone along her turf had already registered. She was lost in an unfamiliar part of Dallas for two hours before an ACORN search party managed to rescue her from the heat.

Still, she exemplified the spirit of the Tent City dwellers who never started bitching because it was hot, or because the food arrived two hours late, or because there were so many things to bitch at. Without having accomplished anything in five hours on the streets, she was looking forward to hearing Jesse Jackson speak at the Tent City that night. He cancelled however, and she was disappointed. Then, that night at the interfaith service, she shocked me when she learned over to me and said: "I'm going to take some of those voter registration cards to where I work."

The real story, then, is about Nancy Riggings from Fort Worth. Or Nancy Riggins the maid from Chicago. Or Nancy Riggins the bed pan cleaner in Little Rock. Or Nancy Riggins the single unemployed mother in a Roxbury. Or Nancy Riggins the illegal immigrant from Mexico who works in the factory for a buck and a half an hour.

The story is not about the middle-class "peacekeepers" who forget Nancy Riggins when they "Rally for Peace and Freedom" and forget "Jobs". The story is not about the press who sip their Coors, stuff their face with shrimp, and pronounce the death of protest movements in our time. The story is not about Republicans who blow into town, spend money, drink, vote on the party platform without bothering to read it over first, and take "Fritz and Tits" buttons home as souvenirs. Nor is the story about young middle-class students like myself, who are able to take off a few weeks, months, or years to work with poor people while living under the poverty line themselves--though all the time with the knowledge in the back of their mind that they can leave the squalor when they can take it no more.

Instead it is about the Nancy Riggins of this country, who are trapped with low pay, unstable work, and ever pressing needs outrunning their budgets. They are the ones who have never heard the smug, intellectual argument I have heard so often in this corner of Cambridge--that Mondale is little different than Reagan, and the best thing for a progressive to do is not to vote at all-otherwise one is selling out. The story is about those who will fight when they can, where they can, whether they succeed fully or not, whether they attract attention or not. If this portrayal may seem a little romanticized, so be it. For perhaps romanticism is the stuff that dreams, tent cities, and social change is made of.