Facebook X Email Print Save Story On Monday night, as the opening gavel sounded to announce the start of the Democratic National Convention, many of the buses shuttling delegates from their hotels in downtown Chicago had been snarled in an hours-long traffic jam. Outside the United Center arena, anxious delegates waited in long security lines. Rumors circulated that the holdup was related to a group of demonstrators protesting the war in Gaza who had breached the outer ring of fencing around the building earlier that evening.
But by eight o’clock, as the night’s headliners began speaking, the protests had de-escalated, and the arena had finally started to fill. After a month of upheaval, the Democratic Party was ready to assert a revamped identity under its new nominee, Kamala Harris . “This light-up mohawk is what you call the Harris mohawk special,” a goateed delegate from Georgia named Danny T.
Stone told me, when I asked about the glowing headband he was wearing. Most of the fashion on Night One of the Convention was subdued—delegates were saving their looks for the roll call the next night—but Stone had decided to make a small statement. “It’s saying that I’m lighting up the joy that you’re seeing here.
” The Lede Reporting and commentary on what you need to know today. Stone, a retiree and a thirty-four-year veteran of the Georgia National Guard, had been a stalwart Joe Biden supporter. The change in plans had initially been hard to take.
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