COVER -> American Dreams
22 January, 2001 - [Editor's Note: In Saturday's reporting on the Bush Inaugural I tried to give you background and perspective on how The World's Magazine is covering this story. Today, I mean to give you comments from people I encountered at the Inaugural and the people with whom I attended it. I'll close with my own perceptions of the significance of the event, implications and possible consequences. -- RA]
The last place I would have expected to run into a San Francisco cop was Washington, D.C. But there he was. I wouldn't have known it if one of the protestors hadn't gone up to him asking for directions.
That's when he explained to her that he was just there for the inauguration, like her. This was all about overtime for this guy, Baby! And he was having the time of his life dealing with such a docile crowd. After all, as one Republican Congressman had joked during former President Bush's adminstration: "A demonstration? That's what they call a date in San Francisco."
Further down Pennsylvania Avenue, about 1000 or so I believe, Kierstan, one of the members of our party, decided that we should check out a march going on parallel to Pennsylvania Avenue. She was excited. This was the first "real action" she had seen so far that cold and rainy day. We were on our way to Freedom Square, but we went back.
When we arrived, we were confronted with a police cordone, concrete barriers and yellow-tape lines. The police were not going to let anyone join the parade that was noisily proceeding town the street, surrounded by police vehicles with their flashing red and blue lights and sirens blazing.
That nobody could join the parade upset one Black woman, in her late thirties or early forties. "What is this?!?" she demanded loudly. "You hold me up to get in and now you won't let me out!"
The police were unflappable. This was not an authorized exit from the event. If she wanted out she would have to go to an authorized exit.
"Am I being held prisoner now?"
The police instructed all of us assembled to move along.
The sister, walking away angry, continued to talk loud to the police and anyone who would listen: "I can't even cross a street now? I paid for this street. Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!"
Three middle-aged White women joined her in the chant of "Sieg Heil!"
As Ethan, Dave and I were walking away from the barricades, a woman in her twenties who had also tried to get through called out: "Hey! Hey wait! You want to hear my joke? What is George Bush's definition of Roe versus Wade? Two ways to get across the Potomac!"
There were many vignettes like that during that long, wet day. I thought about a lot of them during my shower, trying to wash the grime of the District off my skin, turning the water up hot in the hope that it would deal with the aches of my muscles.
What I came away from the Inaugural with most was the sense that two very important developments had manifested themselves:
- There was a new Left in America that is comprised mostly of young people. The problem, in my view, is that they are extremely politically naive (See "Lamentations" below.) They paint everything in stark black and white. This gives them the weakness of not understanding all of our common humanity and our common flaws. Too many of the 20-something protestors I encountered had *no tolerance.* They looked at anyone who disagreed with them as a lesser human and The Enemy. That kind of self-righteousness is part of the problem, in my view, not part of the solution. Again, that's my opinion. I believe that we all have to have a sense of humor, not just ridicule. We need the ability to laugh at ourselves. Dissenters without humor are fascists-in-the-making.
That gave this new Left the weakness of NOT knowing how to build a larger constituency and left them prey to defeats that would make them drop out of political engagement --- as many of their parents had done. That was a scenario for more ostriches and future Republicans like the people they had come to oppose on Saturday.
- Use of the very word "fascism" leaves one open to being accused of hyperbole and over-blown rhetoric. Nonetheless, I could not but feel, going through the checkpoints for all citizens and visitors (there were foreign visitors in the crowd) --- some of whom I talked to from Australia, Germany and the Czech Republic --- and seeing the fences with barbed-wire above them, erected around the main street of the capital of my country, that I had entered a police state. What was wrong with this picture was that the so-called "Bastion of Freedom" was carrying on its transfer of power in much the way a banana republic might. Even worse, the "Leader of the Free World" was afraid to get out of his armored-car and face his own people.
Though I'm a recognized dissident, I'm also a professional journalist. I try, as much as I can to be even-handed. But these issues caused me concern. I'll comment on them below.
I asked Diamond D, a Green Party member who invited me to take part in this protest to give me his opinion of our experience. This is what he wrote:
The 2001 presidential inauguration was this past Saturday and I was present along with the editor of G21, a high school friend and my roommates (all of whom except the editor are Green party members). I have never been to a protest or a parade in such miserable conditions.This past September 26 (the first anniversay of the Seattle protests against the WTO) was pretty awful in Hartford, but we didn't have to contend with the Secret Service or 6,800 police in Hartford restricting our movements.
For some reason, once we achieved access to the parade route, we were stuck in a three block section, with little access in or out. [Editor's Note: Actually, our party had access and travelled through a six block area when we arrived. As time progressed, and after the take-over at Freedom Square, the authorities began to limit access all along the parade route. As noted above,access in or out became more limited the closer the President-elect's appearance before the American public became. --- Ed.]
The actions of the Secret Service and their minions were definitely a violation of our Fourth Amendment rights. The upside of this was that some elite Republican ticket holders were not allowed to get to their seats, while the downside was a severe dampening of spirits and a limiting of the show of force the demonstrators could have had had we been allowed free movement and assembly.
So, you might ask, what was the point?
Well to any person present in D.C. this weekend , it was obvious that the forces of good had descended upon the city to make our presence known.
Everywhere you went close to the route along Penn. Ave., Anti-Bush demonstrators outnumbered Pro-Bush folks about 3-1. We were a definite majority.
The voice of the American people was heard this time around, and with minimal violence and arrests. This is incredbly important because it makes it hard for the members of the power structure who are responsible for Public Relations to justify the violence and tactics of the police that we have seen at the protests in the past year and a half.
This shows the American people who never leave their couches that it is not all anarchists and rioters, but average people who are tired of business as usual, and especially upset with the blatant election theivery that took place.
In my opinion, although I had a awful time and felt like shit afterwards, this protest was one of the most sucessful I have ever attended.
Let's look at the big picture, though.
I heard today Bush has already cut international funding for abortion related groups. First day!
Are we surprsed? No.
But this makes it obvious what his priorities are. Also he has revealed his education plan, which has a clause to take federal funding away from failing schools. Isn't that great? Hmmm lemme guess: probably inner city schools?
Bush is already attempting to install racist and religious policies, and this is only the first day.
What is to come??? As I told the others in our party, all day long I had wished for a sign which read, "Welcome to the Fourth Reich" on one side, and on the other "We're Fucked!"
A bit crude to be sure, but hey, it's true.
As regular G21 readers know, I've been involved in politics a long time. In all my years of fundraising for professional politicans, of attending rallies, of knocking on doors and passing out leaflets, of commenting on the political scene and ghostwriting articles and speeches for politicians, I never thought I would see, in America, what I suffered to see this weekend.THERE IS SOMETHING ROTTEN IN AMERICA.
One of the few protestors who was my age, meaning pushing fifty, came up to me as our party was following a street theater group to ask me what their anti-corporate chant was. When I told her, this lady smiled, beaming beatifically and said, "So maybe there is still hope."
During my final hours of standing in the rain, I was directly in the midst of a number of His Fraudulency's supporters. It was an interesting experience. Directly in front of me were four women in their forties, like myself, who had brought their mother along. Around 2 o'clock, the mother began to complain that this inaugural had been handled badly and that she wanted to go back to her hotel. One of her daughters gently suggested that they give it another half hour. If the parade didn't happen by then, they would leave. Daughter two said, "Mom, I'd take you back, but I don't think the police will let us out now. Look what happened with those school kids. They are still trying to get out."
Banana Republic. And I'm not talking about the retail clothing store here.
Of course, you won't find this reported in the Mouthpiece Media accounts of our national ritual.
Lamentations
Years ago, I wrote a piece for the San Francisco Bay Guardian entitled "Why I am Radical." It focused on the fact that most people believe that as you get older you become more conservative --- something I've never believed to be true. Look at Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, Susan B. Anthony, Mohandas Gandhi, Bertram Russell, Martin Luther King Jr., Vanessa Redgrave or Shirley McLaine, if you don't want to choose me.
The point of my lamentation, though, is that I feel this generation, my Baby Boom generation, of Leftists has failed to pass on our political knowledge to the young to whom we expect we pass on our mantles. I try here.
But too many of us, as one friend suggested on the telephone last night, ran away from the WEAK "L" word, Liberal --- let alone defended our rights to be from the Left. Too many decided they had to focus on family alone, or work alone, of just surviving the Reagan-Bush era. So they went silent, even with their own children, about their core values and beliefs. They sat mute when their kids brought home nigger jokes from school classmates and talked about beating up fags, for example. They looked the other way when the children came home talking about women filing sexual harassment suits as examples of Rush Limbaugh's "femi-nazis"
There was an abdication of responsibility on the Left that is unforgivable.
And now there is Hell to pay. George the Second will most certainly roll back the advances, meagre as they were, of the last eight years.
Bear in mind, Gentle Readers, I never liked Dollar Bill. I railed against him, too. He was as close to a Republican version of what used to be considered a Democrat as this country has ever seen. He was a corporate politician.
So imagine what this country will look like now that George Dubya is in charge.
Right now they are sitting in the White House of these United States laughing and saying: "Yee-haw! In two years you won't recognize this place!"
That's what I saw this weekend when the Secret Service and both the regular and imported police said I could get in to see the inaugural, but I couldn't get out. Hotel California.
Part One of Boos to The Chief