In which our delegate squeaks through an election, redefines "special" transport, advances on Chicago in solitary splendor, takes her place in the Hall of the Bulls and confronts the Christopher Reeve, er, problem.

Editor: We do know this is 2000, not 1996, so why this retrospective look at a national political convention? "I think the story illustrates the constant tension between outsider and insider, and the need to negotiate the various definitions of your self and your role," says Johnson. "For me, the convention presented the conflicts as clearly as I've ever experienced them." And our own reason? It's a marvelous tale.

Harriet McBryde Johnson Photo by Susan K. Dunn

Columbia, S.C., May 11,1996: I knew this year's State Democratic Convention would be dull. Everyone here is a Clinton delegate, even me. The usual feuds seem to be in remission. Why come? Because I'm a municipal party chair. I'm part of the scene.

To relieve the tedium, I'm running for national convention delegate. After 20 years of party work, it's about time. And being a wheelchair user, I can do my bit to make the convention look like America.

But as the day wears on, I keep losing, ballot after ballot. Losing gets my blood up. By suppertime, I'm really keen to go to Chicago. Hungry and tired, we're told to elect two more women delegates. About three-quarters of the crowd has gone home. Among the hard-core Democratic rump, I have a good many friends. They elect me on the last vote.

I make a list of accommodations I'll need. Accessible transport from the airport and around Chicago. A floor pass for my attendant. A place to sit, in my chair, with my state delegation. Assurance that all events will be accessible. The state leadership promises to get answers from the Democratic National Committee.

Charleston, S.C., May to August: A stream of phone calls and faxes on logistical details. I get a call from the state Democratic Party:

"Harriet, good news. All events are accessible. The airport shuttle leaves every 15 minutes and all vans are lift-equipped. You'll have a designated spot with our delegation. If you need help on the floor, the DNC will assign a volunteer."

"What? I need my own assistant. My sister Beth has already volunteered." I'm flustered. I don't want to admit that I'm a bit afraid. Without help, I might not be able to move through the crowds. I might be trapped.

Mike Ervin's in Chicago; local crips always know the scoop. I send him an e-mail. Mike tells me to call his sister, Cris Matthews, who's working with the organizing committee.

I call Cris, tell her about the attendant issue. "Hmmm," she says, "Mike says you're a lot like me. Is that true?"

"I imagine. I'm a lot like Mike." We're talking about our disabilities.

"So you need serious help in the bathroom?"

"Yeah, but the real problem," I confide, "is that I don't know what it'll be like in those crowds. I might need someone to bust through them for me."

Cris understands. I ask her about the amazing accessible airport shuttle.

"I don't think so," she says.

Directly and through intermediaries, the DNC assures me there will be no problems. They keep telling me about this totally accessible shuttle. I fax them my flight information just in case. The only problem seems to be Beth's floor pass. Cris is working on that.

A progress report from Cris: "It doesn't look good. They still say you can use a volunteer. I thought I was getting to them when I pointed out you're a lawyer and you'd sue if their volunteer dropped you, but they still say no." I thank her for trying.

Within the hour, a call from the Democrats: "We've approved a floor pass for your sister, subject to Secret Service clearance."

The Amazing Accessible Airport Shuttle
O'Hare Airport, August 24: As Beth and I arrive at the shuttle stop, a van is about to leave. It has no lift. We go to a young woman with a DNC badge and a walkie-talkie.

"These vans are not handicap accessible," she says. "There will be special transport for you."

When? She doesn't know. What's their number? She doesn't know. Who does know? She doesn't know. Ask the person on the other end of the walkie-talkie, I suggest.

"We're Delegate Transportation," she says, "you need Disability Services."

"As it happens, I am a Delegate in need of Transportation. And I was told the shuttles were accessible."

"Who told you that?"

"Disability Services. Everyone."

"Not me." The walkie-talkie woman turns her back and busies herself with important things.

I see a woman in a manual wheelchair who has the look of someone who's been there for quite a while.

"How long have you been waiting?"

"An hour."

"What's the deal?"

"I don't know."

I roll out to the curb where carousing delegates are filling those inaccessible vans.

"Good afternoon, you are boarding a discriminatory shuttle service. Did you know this shuttle discriminates?"

African Americans look shocked; European Americans get squirmy.

"This van is for walking people only. No wheelchair people can ride."

Suddenly walkie-talkies are all over the place. They rush past me to the other conventioneers. "A special van is coming for her."

All the faces, white and black, register relief.

"They say a van is coming, but this woman's already been waiting an hour. Your van is here. Ours is not here. You're going. We're waiting. That's second class service. Separate and unequal."

A woman steps into the van and looks back with a very sweet smile. "I hope your special van will be here real soon." She almost pats my head.

Another group flocks to another van and I start another harangue. I get the same reaction: shock, discomfort, reassurance, condescension.

The walkie-talkies offer to reimburse us for taxis. No, my power chair won't fit. But the other woman on wheels agrees. I feel like hectoring her about solidarity--I want her to help me get a sit-in going--but in her place, I'd probably just take a cab myself.

At least I've motivated the walkie-talkies to get me out of the way. Finding me a lift-equipped vehicle has become high priority.

Finally, my special transport arrives. It's a 60-passenger bus, bright yellow with big black letters: Cook County Public Schools. A Cook County school bus driver, guffawing about all the hullabaloo, delivers us in solitary splendor to our pricey hotel.

Disability Nation
August 25: Pre-convention events are under way. The South Carolina delegation is scheduled to go by rail to a party in historic Pullman. I've been trying to find out if it's accessible. Mayor Bob Coble of Columbia, our delegation chair, has been trying to help but we still don't know.

We meet Cris and her husband David for an afternoon event, and they propose that we go out to dinner. I did want to go to Pullman with my delegation, but if it doesn't work out, I'll be livid. Cris and David know their way around. The choice is clear.

After enjoying the long twilight of northern latitudes, Beth and I walk back to our room. We have four telephone messages, all from Mayor Bob.

"Still working on the Pullman trip. I'll call you back."

"It will be accessible, but we're not sure exactly how."

"Harriet! They found us a lift-equipped bus big enough for all of us! Be in the lobby at six."

"We're leaving. Where are you?"

Oops. Mayor Bob really went out of his way. And no telling where they got that bus. I hope they'll forgive me.

August 26: The first meeting of the disability caucus makes me feel good about being here. We're the Disability Nation, with all kinds of disabilities, regional accents, personal styles. There are in-your-face activists, policy wonks and officials in suits. Black and white and Asian and Other. Men and women. Everything but Republicans. When the discussion starts it opens with--what else?--logistics.

We're told this will be the most accessible convention ever. After what happened at the airport I'm a little skeptical, but the speakers' disabilities give them credibility. The discussion moves to politics.

Becky Ogle talks about how we can make a difference in November, and how November will make a difference to us. She's smart and feisty and wears a pointy-toed Texas cowboy boot on her one foot. Then there's Tom Harkin--my man! I worked for him in the 1992 primary--talking with real expertise about the ADA. Cabinet officers brief us on disability policy. No one talks down to us. We are important members of the coalition.

Judith Heumann, the great disability rights pioneer, speaks as head of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services. I'll write her name at the top of my reasons to back Clinton. No Bill, no Judy.

The Reeve Pentecost
The buses to the United Center, the vast arena where the Chicago Bulls play, leave right in front of our hotel and they do have lifts. I roll into the first bus in line and an efficient Chicago Transit driver rams my big wheel into the clamp. It's good to be jammed in with all these cheerful Democrats, off for shared adventure.

South Carolina is assigned a section just to the left of the podium. My spot is right beside the aisle. We get there so early that there's no TV except C-span. The floor is busy but not packed.

In the evening comes network TV; the floor gets more crowded, more intense. Occasionally a camera or boom microphone swings perilously close to my head; each time Beth jumps up to deflect disaster.

The DNC has assigned a staff person to our aisle, a man with a walkie-talkie. I try to get him interested in crowd control, but it's clear that his job is to pass out signs and cue our "spontaneous demonstrations." He is there to make sure we look good on TV.

They've been building up to tonight's major prime-time speaker, and now they're introducing him: Christopher Reeve. When the introduction ends, the hall lights are dimmed. Onto the stage he rolls and then sits, gleaming under a dramatic spotlight. The crowd is on its feet, wild with welcome, with excitement, with awe. Yes. They're awed by the mere sight of this man sitting, smiling, looking around. He hasn't said a word and they're going crazy. It's real. There's no prompting from the DNC staffers.

I'm in the middle of 60,000 drop-jawed souls, witness to a late 20th-century Pentecost. Physically, Reeve is way above the 60,000, isolated by that spotlight. Symbolically, he's the object of devotion, not a member of the fellowship. As Reeve and the crowd are having their communion, I feel completely out of it.

He's speaking now. I try to listen, but things have become surreal. I look up at Reeve.

I look up and I see ... a ventriloquist's dummy.

How could I think such a thing? I'm horrified. If these worshippers knew my thoughts, they'd tear me up and throw me to the dogs.

I tell myself Reeve's playing out the very peculiar drama of his life the best way he knows how. He's being used, but what can he do? This is a new role for him. He has no script.

But, there he is, Charlie McCarthy.

Where is this image coming from? No quad I've ever known has impressed me this way. I'm pretty quad-like myself. Maybe it's the staging that objectifies him. Or maybe it's the contrast between his persona and the physical vigor we expect on the podium of a national political convention.

No. It's the face. That smile running from ear to ear. The face is commonly considered animated, but I see something ... wooden.

I'm warmed by the sudden sunburst of TV lights; a camera crew is setting up. They want the crip reaction to Reeve's speech.

"Beth, can you block me?"

She stands between me and the camera. The crew establishes a new sightline and she leans right into it. They call someone on their cell phones.

Reeve's measured syllables are perfectly timed with his mechanical puffs of air. The pauses make what he's saying seem important. Even in the dim lights I can see the faces in the crowd, transfixed by the sight of him, fascinated by the sound of him. The gleaming presence. The ventilator whoosh. The body propped up in dress-up clothes.

The camera crew realizes that Beth's not going away. They load up their gear and head elsewhere.

Moments later, there's a woman in a wheelchair on the giant TV screen in the rafters. She's scowling. Quick cut to a nondisabled white woman, tears streaming across a smiling face, backlit to highlight her moment of inspiration. The lights pick out a variety of delegates. White, black, old, young, male, female. Everything but crips.

It's melodrama. The kind of Telethon melodrama I tried to ignore in my childhood and youth, tried to ignore until finally I got angry enough to put up a picket line. How could they bring the Telethon here, to a national political convention? This is my party. How could they do it?

The speech ends and the lights come on. As emotion runs through this vast arena, I'm left cold. I can't possibly feel what they feel. Now they'll want to see me the way they see Reeve, a disability object, presumably tragic but brave, someone to make them grateful they're not like us.

I tell myself I'm overreacting, but I'm almost shaking when I join the line at the elevators. A misty-eyed stranger kneels down beside me and clutches the hand I'm trying to drive my chair with.

"Wasn't that just wonderful?"

"No," I blurt out, "it wasn't at all wonderful. I thought it was pretty bad."

"Well, I thought it was wonderful." She springs up and pivots away with an angry shoe-clop on the hard floor. How dare I refuse to be inspired?

On the bus ride back, everyone rhapsodizes about how inspired they are. Gone is the usual friendly chitchat. I stare at the black floor mat and withdraw from the group that has set me apart.

We get to our rooms, way past ready to collapse into our beds, but there's a blinking light on our phone. A message from Mike Ervin: "Hi. Some people from Chicago are having a press conference tomorrow to deal with the Christopher Reeve, er, problem ... "

Beth writes down the details. We'll be there.

The conclusion of "Conventional Wisdom" will run in the October issue.

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