Sunday, Jul 6, 2008
Demonstrators lining the parade route give the new presidential limo an unwelcome splash on its way to the White House.
Jan 20, 2001 | Not since Richard Nixon paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in 1973 has a presidential Inauguration drawn so many protesters -- and last time, people were out to protest the Vietnam War.
Demonstrators turned out in droves on Saturday -- a miserably gray and drizzly day, with temperatures hovering in the mid-30s -- to protest the Inauguration of President George W. Bush, whose election was contested all the way to the Supreme Court. Police would not estimate the size of the crowd, but many thousands of protesters were in evidence.
"The level of people on the streets shows that people are really upset about lack of democratic process," says Liz Butler of the Justice Action Movement, the umbrella organizing committee responsible for the protest. "They took it to the streets. We saw tens of thousands. We saw far more protesting Bush than supporting him."
They came out in scores, co-existing on the parade route with supporters of the new president and lining Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House. Interspersed between Bush-Cheney signs and Texas flags were thousands of protest placards, bearing inscriptions such as "Bush Cheated," "Hail to the Thief," "Selected not elected," "Bushwhacked by the Supremes" and "Golly Jeb, we pulled it off!" There were also plenty of R-rated signs, like "Dick and Bush" and "George Wanker Bush." One poster included a caricature of a metaphorically toothless Bush in the image of Alfred E. Neuman.
The protesters were a who's-who of lefty causes -- from feminism and the pro-choice movement to anti-death penalty protesters (identifiable by their ubiquitous "Free Mumia" garb), gay rights activists and environmentalists. There were also dozens of youth wearing the vinegar-soaked, tear gas- and pepper spray-resistant bandanas that have become a symbol of the protest movement's anarchist elements. But there was no one rappelling off buildings, nor any of the random acts of violence against global corporate outposts that characterized the Battle of Seattle just over a year ago.
One sign underlined the irony of the number of protesters who attended the parade Saturday: "From nadir to Nader in 2004." Indeed, many of the protesters were also supporters of Ralph Nader's failed presidential bid. Where he did succeed, however, was in winning 2 percent of the Florida vote that arguably would have gone to Gore. In other words, many of the demonstrators who turned out were actually protesting a president who they helped to deliver to the White House.
The best explanation for Saturday's relative calm was that protesters were distributed widely along the parade route -- the police did an effective job of isolating protesters and the general public in small clusters along Pennsylvania Avenue, drastically reducing the threat of riots or violence.
But this also meant there was a steady stream of heckling of Bush and Cheney as they moved along the broad boulevard toward the White House. And it wasn't entirely without incident. There were a few minor altercations between protesters and police. The AP reported that in one incident, impatient protesters who wanted to get closer to the parade route slashed tires on cars before getting arrested.
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