The Advocate

Inauguration Protest Small on Numbers
But Big on Enthusiasm

Matt Lau
Protesters braved the elements, the security, and the jubilation of their political opponents at the second inauguration of President George W. Bush on January 20 in downtown Washington, DC. At an early-morning rally organized by the DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) in Meridian Square Park, former Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb told supporters, “I’ve been in their jails and it’s not so bad.” By the end of the day more than a dozen people would be able to judge that for themselves, as they were arrested along the presidential parade route. Meanwhile, many others were brutalized with pepper spray volleys as the president’s motorcade sped past.

The crowd that gathered at Meridian (unofficially known as Malcolm X Park) consisted mostly of the usual suspects. There were socialists with their newspapers, hippy drum corps, and gray-haired direct-action veterans. There were unassuming volunteers who carried faux-coffins draped in American flags, an image familiar to many from the RNC march this summer. There were hip-hop communists, like Son-of-Nun, who summed up the order of the day, yelling “Fuck Bush!” from the stage. There was also an unofficial contest for the most incendiary remark one could fit onto a sign or placard. Some of the highlights included the spoonerism “Buck Fush,” “Worst President Ever,” and what appeared to be the title of a forthcoming dissertation: “Bush: A Motherfucker.”

The signs were pithy and “on-message,” while the complaints from the demonstrators and the rally’s speakers varied widely. Protesters spoke out against nearly every policy from the first four years of the Bush presidency. Ending the war in Iraq was central among their complaints, but speakers also demanded more robust social programs – “Money for schools, not bombs” – socialized health services, real reductions in poverty, and the end of racism, sexism and US imperialism in Iraq and beyond.

At around 11:30, shortly before the President took his oath, the rally at Meridian terminated in a counter-inaugural march. The police appeared at every intersection along the march route and in helicopters overhead, passively foreshadowing their actions to follow at 4th and Pennsylvania Avenue. Supposedly, “thousands of groups from forty-one states were converging on the inauguration,” but judging from the fact that the march had to wait at stoplights for cross-town traffic to pass, that claim seemed hyperbolic.

What the DAWN march lacked in numbers, however, it made up for with enthusiasm. Indeed, protesters were in high spirits as the march headed south on 16th Street to I Street (just a block away from the White House). “The Rhythm Workers Union” provided a raucous backbeat at the front of the march that sounded like a drum circle with a sense of direction and a purpose. No less enthused were the occasional onlookers who encouraged the marchers from opened apartment windows or honked horns as they waited at intersections.

By 1 pm, the march had veered east on I to 15th and come to its official conclusion to the accompaniment of a small, marching band playing jazz: five horn players and a drummer doing their best to make patriotic songs into protest fare and wailing in a way reminiscent of a New Orleans Cajun-style funeral march.

From there, the protesters seemed to lose direction. Fortunately, the march was one of many counter-inaugural events organized for the day. Many people headed to 4th and Penn, where the ANSWER coalition was staging a rally of its own adjacent to the parade route. Most of the arrests and police brutality took place at this corner as the inaugural parade was getting under way. Other marchers took positions at different points of access to the parade route and then waited for the parade itself to begin.

Watching how things proceeded, one could see the genius of the President’s parade organizers. They put the official protest zone near the beginning of the route, allowed free public access up to about the middle of the route, but permitted only admit ticketed visitors at the end, where the President was to get out of his limo and walk. By keeping the protesters away from the end of the route when it counted, that is, when the major media and the President were there, the organizers manufactured an image of unanimous celebration, while the President avoided being hit by snowballs (or eggs, as were launched at his limo in 2001).

The most interesting moment of the day was not when the protestors provoked police attacks near 4th and Penn, but when, at 14th and Penn, the opposite ends of the American political continuum waited together for the parade to begin. This was the westernmost spot where protestors could get onto the parade route and their numbers were approximately equal to those of the Bush supporters. Snipers and spotters prominently positioned on every visible building ledge only heightened the tension between the fur coats and cowboy hats and their hecklers.

The PA announcer for this part of the route was caught off guard by the number of protesters who had shown up this far along the parade route. He was there simply to entertain the crowd with harmless presidential trivia while visitors waited for the President to finish eating lunch at the Capital. The first question he asked was fittingly interrupted: “Who was the first president not to be elected to….”

“Buuuuusssssh!!” The burgeoning opposition responded. After a few more rudely answered questions about Teddy Roosevelt and Nancy and Ronnie the PA announcer quit his game for about thirty minutes. The protesters seemed satisfied until the announcer started in again, “Sorry folks, we’ve had some difficulties with our generator but now we’d like to the get back to our trivia.”

This time the protestors chanted, “No more trivia! No more trivia! No more trivia!” which even had the DC storm troopers standing guard laughing. The joke hid a kernel of truth: these are anything but trivial times.

Matt Lau is a student in the PhD program in English.