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Coronation II (continued)


11:15 a.m. The DAWN march is slow to start. From behind the march, an on-stage speaker gently but deliberately urges the demonstrators to hurry up. "Hit the road, folks! Let’s go show Bush what we think!" The protesters move lazily, like bar patrons dragging their feet at closing time. It probably doesn’t help that it’s cold, so everyone’s swaddled in puffy jackets, gloves, knit caps. The procession, by now thousands strong, moves languidly down 16th Avenue, as though it hasn’t had coffee.

During the Republican National Convention, Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt derided the throng of protest marchers as people who lived "outside of the mainstream." While that wasn’t true during the RNC, this crowd is mostly progressive. On the sidelines, I run into ubiquitous Boston activist and former city-council candidate Dan "the Bagel Man" Kontoff. "There aren’t any Democrats here," he says, when asked why there were more protesters at the RNC. "The Democrats support the Republicans in many ways."

The anarchist contingent is the most lively, yelling the call-and-response, "What’s the solution?/People’s revolution!/What’s the reaction?/Direct action!" One of their signs begs, LIBERALS, CAN WE RIOT NOW???

12:30 p.m. Around this time, a "festive, rowdy, and direct-action oriented march" is scheduled to take place at Logan Circle, off P Street. And so the bandanna-wrapped cabal of anti-authoritarians defects from the main DAWN march and heads there. Unlike DAWN, the anti-authoritarians don’t have a permit for their march — they are anarchists — so 10 or 15 motorcycle cops await them, along with five or six police cruisers, and at least one police van. Sirens wail in the distance.

A few hundred kids are here. It’s a motley assortment of hoods, bandannas, knit caps, black-and-red flags, and upside-down American flags. "I’m ready for some bullshit," says a young woman with a brown bandanna.

On time, they take off. Marching behind a street-wide black sign bearing two anarchy symbols, a flaming skull and crossbones, and the warning RIGHT WING SCUM/YOUR TIME HAS COME, they intone, "Not our president! Not our president!" The DAWN march was languid and meandering; this is direct, stomping, and frenetic. There are radical punks in studded-leather jackets. A black-and-white banner declares FUNDAMENTALISM IS FASCISM; a white one threatens DOWN WITH KING GEORGE, beside a drawing of a guillotine. Noah Learned, a 23-year-old Kent State student originally from Louisiana, explains that it didn’t matter who got elected. He identifies himself as a Socialist; he and the busload of college students who drove here from Ohio would’ve protested in any event: "No matter who won the presidency, we would’ve come."

Reactions vary. Firefighters stare blankly through a garage window. An Asian man with facial piercings gives the thumbs up from a Thai-restaurant window. As the protesters get closer to the barricades blocking off Pennsylvania Avenue, a gawking cluster of young Republican dorks responds with W-shaped hand signals — palms out, thumbs together. A shaved-bald spectator in a Texas Longhorns sweatshirt guffaws, "They came up with chants?"

As the march turns the corner of Ninth Street, a wall of cops bars the anti-authoritarians from going any further. But the march has momentum, and the anarchists aren’t slowing down. There’s frantic pushing, lobbed snowballs, and then something snaps. An angry confrontation ensues, with quick, furious movements. The frame of the RIGHT WING SCUM sign snaps, its white tubed backbone flying up into the air like a javelin. The W-fingered Republicans run. Cones flip over. Cops grab at people’s arms. Pepper spray streams. All this lasts for approximately three minutes.

"On the sidewalk!" Billy clubs in hand, the policemen clear the street. "On the sidewalk! Go!"

A chubby anarchist sees me scribbling in a notebook. "Are you media?" Activists love media only when they want to complain about cops. "I was on the front lines. This cop said — and I quote — ‘If you don’t move, I’ll fuckin’ kill you.’ "

A female anarchist beside him testifies on his behalf. "We were just chanting," she insists. "We weren’t even doing property destruction. And we got attacked."

I ask her name. "Bonefish?" Her anti-authoritarian circle of friends nods. "Yeah, call me Bonefish."

Her male friend also won’t give me his real name. He asks me to identify him as Goat from Orlando, and admits that the anti-authoritarians were throwing snowballs at the cops when the confrontation ensued. Then he adds, "Yeah, we were throwing snowballs. But so what? You’re from Boston. Isn’t that how the Boston Massacre got started?"

1:20 p.m. An altercation erupts between a gray-haired man and a punk anarchist. A block away from the Hard Rock Café, the wool-coated older man stares down the protester in the middle of the street — his face suggests that he would love to beat the kid’s ass. As 20 or 30 vegan-skinny, black-clad cohorts rush over to the anarchist’s defense, the older man backs off. Glaringly. As he walks away, one of his friends realizes there are flecks of bright yellow mush splotched on the back of his coat.

I approach them to find out what happened. "Nothing," the man with the dirty coat says. "They were throwing snowballs at her," he says, motioning toward a female companion. "Because she’s wearing a fur coat." I ask what the globby mess on his coat is. "Nothing the dry cleaner can’t take out," he smirks. Turns out, it’s tofu.

1:55 p.m. The Presidential Inaugural Parade is the one celebratory event that’s open to the public. No matter what your net worth, sexual orientation, political affiliation, or stance on abortion or Iraq or Hostess cupcakes, you are invited. But this isn’t like the usual parade where you can wander down the street, plop down for a few minutes, and then idly decide to leave. You have to be determined, patient, and persistent. The actual parade route is secured like a fortress. The only entrances are high-security access points of doorway metal detectors, Secret Service agents with corkscrew wires spiraling out their ears, and husky women acting as feeler-uppers. Obviously, this is some serious shit.

On the corner of 11th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue stands Joan Meyer, a teacher at DC’s César Chávez Public Charter High School for Public Policy. An anti-W shirt pulled over her bulky maroon winter coat, Meyer brandishes an inflatable, Pinocchio-nosed George W. Bush outfitted in his infamous aviator suit. "They took the stick," she says, showing me a hole in Bush’s balloony butt where a wooden stick would elevate him. "[Security] wouldn’t let me bring it inside." Security also asked her to deflate George — they wanted to sniff the air inside.

Since Inauguration Day effectively shut down DC, Meyer brought her two public-school-student children, seven-year-old Maude and five-year-old Paul Brannon. ("I’m one of those radically liberal women who didn’t change her last name," Meyer says, laughing.) They’d all come to protest four years ago. "There were a lot more protesters here last time," Meyer concedes. "I think it was because this time the election fraud was better hidden."

Paul and Maude are also wearing protest shirts. Paul’s says something about how the public-school vacation day is costing his elder peers a free lunch. Maude’s shirt is a wee bit more confrontational: in a seven-year-old’s scrawl, the front reads BOO BUSH!, beside a child’s drawing of Mom’s balloon doll; the back says, AS A SMALL CHILD, I AM DEEPLY DISILLUSIONED BY THE RAPE AND TORTURE OF OUR DEMOCRACY.

"Somebody walking by said this was child abuse," Meyer says, fumbling with the juice boxes in her coat pockets. " ‘What kind of mother would put a sign on her children?’ With all that’s happening today, especially with the Patriot Act, I think [the message] is more poignant than ever." I mention that some people might raise objections to her using the words "rape" and "torture" on an elementary-schooler’s T-shirt. "Well, that’s obviously for shock value," she admits. "I believe it’s my duty to teach my children to exercise their rights. I’ve been teaching them this since they were born."

Unprompted, Paul yells, "John Kewy!" He’s assumed a perch on a set of steps with Maude.

"See, they don’t need any encouragement," Meyer giggles.

Three Republican women spying through a glass door at the top of the steps read Maude and Paul’s backs. They noticeably cringe.

page 2  page 3 

Issue Date: January 28 - February 3, 2005
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