'Wealthy' Protesters Make Case Outside DNC

BOSTON—As the nation’s top Democrats put on their rigorously on-message pageant in Boston this week, a wide variety of protesters gathered intermittently to pound out their own slogans in the environs of the FleetCenter. Some, scorning the Party faithful who gathered nearby, urged passersby to trust President Bush at all costs; others used the convention as an opportunity to launch a fiercer brand of anti-administration rhetoric than might have been allowed on the upbeat stage, lacing their words with righteous condemnation and the occasional expletive.

And then, as former Vice President Al Gore ’69 might put it, there was that little-known third category.

Taken at face value, the Billionaires for Bush certainly seem to fit in with those booing yesterday’s nomination of Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., from afar. Ask any of them about recent trends in domestic and foreign policy and they will coo rapturous praise for the White House’s current occupant. And his opponent?

“John Kerry is a class-traitor who wants nothing more than to scrap the incredible progress our nation has made over the last four years and return America to the grubby hands of the unwashed middle-class masses,” read a call to arms posted recently on the Billionaires’ website. “It is our sacred duty as guardians of privilege and power to defend the Bush administration from this barbaric electoral challenge. We therefore call upon all loyal People of Wealth to defy the Democratic National Convention and converge on the streets of Boston for a Million Billionaire March on July 27.”

And converge they did—150 of them, according to those who attended—to take back the streets for the silver-spoon set and present a symbolic check in the amount of “whatever it takes” to the local GOP headquarters. Dressed nattily, traveling by limousine whenever possible, courting the camera’s admiring gaze, the average Billionaire could easily be taken by a casual observer for a particularly attention-hungry, slightly mad arch-paleocon.

But look a little closer: Don’t those names—Seymour Benjamins, Mo Bludfer-Oyle, Mona Polist—sound a bit off? Isn’t there the hint of a grin beneath their solidly plutocratic exteriors? And was that check a symbol or a big gag?

The truth of the matter is, as hard as they try to keep in character (and they try pretty hard), the Billionaires are only ironically for Bush. Far from being the obscenely wealthy’s first explicit lobbying group, they are a particularly meta feather in the left wing, seeking to present the excesses of the Bush administration with jokey, street-theatre tactics powered by firm liberalism. Adopting outsize Bush-loving personas, the Billionaires spout often-scripted lines about what they say—well, heavily imply—is a president who has catered dangerously to the top wealth brackets.

BILLIONAIRES ON CAMPUS

Their politics, then, may not be as far right or their pockets as swollen as their act would suggest. But several of the Billionaires are in fact part of another group traditionally caricatured, fair or unfair, as more than financially comfortable: Harvard affiliates.

When the cameras turn away, “Seymour Benjamins,” the Billionaires’ “chief operating officer,” is Matthew R. Skomarovsky ’03, a veteran of the anti-war and living wage movements at the College. “Mona Polist,” their director of campus outreach, is in fact Emma S. Mackinnon ’05, also a longtime Harvard activist on the left and a Crimson editor. “John McMillions” differs by only a letter or two from the flesh-and-blood John C. McMillian, a history and literature tutor and resident tutor in Quincy House. And the eloquently-named “Mo Bludfer-Oyle” is Jennifer Mason, an administrative coordinator at the Graduate School of Education, by day.

As part of the growing group, they have helped stage publicity stunts including the Million Billionaire March with its check, various other theatrical displays, and the “Get on the Limo Tour,” launched here Wednesday, in which the Billionaires plan to crash political events in so-called Midwest swing states.

MEETING WITH SUCCESS?

Mason is confident that this week’s march was “definitely successful,” citing a healthy turnout and media attention from the Fox News Channel and public radio station WBUR.

When they got to the Republican headquarters with their physical carte blanche, Mason says the Billionaires didn’t meet a particularly warm reception—or, for that matter, with any reception at all.

“There didn’t seem to be anyone there,” she recalls. “Apparently they work a nine-to-five work day, and we didn’t get there until 7 or 7:30.”

As for the Democratic convention itself, Mason says the group has avoided the enclosed “free speech zones” set up for protests immediately by the FleetCenter—let alone going inside the building.

“It’s been wise to skirt the pen,” she says, explaining that the Billionaires instead sought a license and a police escort for their march, well outside the convention.

Members agree, though, that the success of the Billionaires’ campaign relies on few tangible convention-week results.

“To be totally honest, it’s more like just getting publicity,” McMillian says of the group’s events.

“It was really more for show,” Mason says about the abortive presentation of the mock check. “A lot of what the Billionaires do—it’s funny, and it’s pointing out the truth by being funny.... While we definitely do want to confront Democrats and Republicans, a lot of it is more drawing attention to these issues of class that are not being addressed.”

Of course, the risks of taking a headily Swiftian approach to social protest are obvious: what if the joke, which is after all pretty serious, flies right past those in the audience?

“Every once in a while you meet some people who actually think we’re billionaires, and I guess that’s not an example of a successful protest,” McMillian says. “But 99 percent of the people got it.”

WHO THEY ARE

The Billionaires themselves can be a bit fuzzy on their unironic identity when it goes beyond their talking points on class-based issues like health care, the minimum wage and war profiteering. Members are prohibited from explicitly endorsing any presidential candidate out of character—and indeed, when the group was founded on a smaller level in 2000 it called itself “Billionaires for Bush or Gore.”

These days their kill-him-with-kindness target has shrunken to Bush alone, and the Billionaires keep their punchlines to a tight list of issues. Their schtick mentions Kerry only in faux-negative terms, but Billionaires are not allowed to support the nominee seriously. What to do, then, with the four-day binge of Democratic boosterism that is the convention?

“The DNC has been an interesting event to try to plan, because we had to figure out what our message was going to be about John Kerry,” Mason says.

Things will be much clearer at next month’s Republican National Convention in New York City, where the Billionaires—just wrapping up their limo tour—can jokily support Bush with no qualms.

“That’s going to be much more of a celebration, and this is more of a protest,” Mason explains.

McMillian has more ominous words.

“The Republican convention will be a totally different vibe,” he says, alluding to a “huge intimidating police presence” that he says will watch over the enormous crowds of protestors expected to show up. “The emotional intensity will be ramped up by about a thousand percent.”

For the time being, McMillian is content to enjoy the Billionaires’ activities in Boston.

“From my perspective, anything that gets people energized and makes protest fun is a good thing,” he says. “We can still get a message across that’s humorous and relevant, and people enjoy seeing us.”

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.