A little bit of everything.

As I sit here watching Representative Paul Ryan (on television) deliver his speech to the Republican National Convention, I am reflecting on the events of the day and cannot help but remember all of the things that are not being shown on the national news channels. Though coverage has been highlighting a number of happenings around Tampa, the audiences that watch the news at the end of the night are not able to get even a fraction of the full experience that a National Party Convention host city has to offer. Today, I was lucky enough to be able to discover first hand what happens outside the politics of the convention walls.

For the first part of the day, we took a trip to downtown to walk around and see the surrounding areas, hoping we might be able to find some outside perspective for our research. What we found was so much more than we expected. We set out to specifically look for protestors, trying to gain a little insight into what they were trying to accomplish at the convention. Fast forward in the story and we arrive at “Romneyville”, a protest camp set up by a number of Occupy movement members and possible anarchists (there were a number of reports circling around Tampa today about an anarchist movement taking place). When talking with a police officer that we asked where we could find the majority of protestors, he warned that we might be able to smell the establishment before we saw it. He didn’t lie. Being entrenched in such an environment really brought the polarity of a National Convention into perspective. (As a personal observation, it did not seem like the protestors were getting much done).

As if that was not enough, on our way back to the car, we stumbled upon another protestor who was very vocal in his criticism of Romney’s Mormonism. Clearly a devout “Christian” (and I use that term loosely), he ridiculed the GOP for nominating a man who was not a traditional Christian. I will not claim to know much about Mormonism, but I know enough to know that this man was delusional, at best.

In our adventures today, we came across so much more than is ever shown on the news. The speeches and the experience of being with the delegation are incredible, but the outside politics that don’t gain as much airtime add an interesting dynamic to the convention as a whole.