Westport First Selectwoman Diane G. Farrell’s voice is a little hoarse and she has yet to catch up on her sleep, but she said today that attending the Democratic national convention in Boston this week was an “exhilarating” experience.

“It was my first convention and it was very exhilarating,” she said in an interview. “It’s sort of a spectacle but it’s important to our democracy. It was thrilling to participate.”
Westport First Selectwoman Diane Farrell works the crowd in Boston this week.(CLICK TO ENLARGE) WestportNow.com photo

Farrell, who returned to Westport Thursday morning after spending two nights in Boston, said she was struck by the blend of big-name politicians and well-known personalities with ordinary people from all over the country.

“I walked into the Sheraton Hotel lobby and there was Jesse Jackson, Jerry Springer, and (former Texas Gov.) Ann Richards,” she said. “Lots of people were freely mingling with them. It felt a bit surreal.”

The Westport official, who faces an uphill battle in her bid to unseat veteran Republican Rep. Christopher Shays in Connecticut’s 4th Congressional District, said she sat with the Connecticut delegation for the Tuesday and Wednesday evening sessions.

By Jessica Bram

Having experienced a whole new level of security screening in airports and New York City building lobbies in the last two years, I thought I already knew what high security means in a post-9/11 world.

But nothing prepared me for the phalanx of armed guards, screeners, scanners and weaponry that I encountered this week at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. And not just at the Fleet Center, where the actual convention is taking place, but in just about every hotel, subway station, nook and cranny throughout the city.

Serious young men in crew cuts, white shirts and suits with curly wires in their ears survey hotel lobby crowds with piercing eyes. Clusters of MPs in camouflaged combat fatigues with M-16 equivalents patrol street corners. Secret Service agents in tight black tee shirts and bulletproof vests block entrances to chain link checkpoints. Its all a little more than unsettling. 

But what really raises inner alarms is the nearly solid wall of police in full riot gear surrounding the Old State House. With segmented armor of thick black padding strapped onto every inch of their bodies, Darth Vader helmets and high-rise black steel sole boots, they look like a cross between something out of Revenge of the Clones and ungainly, upright black carpenter ants. 

It makes the Boston police officers with ordinary pistols and handcuffs seem positively tame, like Officer Boltons without a whole lot to do.