Hail To The Thief

by Geov Parrish

The ostentatious swearing-in ceremonies; the Pennsylvania Avenue procession of floats, marching bands, and military hardware; the sharpshooters on roofs; the stretch limos pulling up to bazillion-dollars-per-ticket gala inaugural balls. All serve not as a humble promise to honor the privilege of serving the American public, but as (publicly) a self-congratulatory reminder that We Are The Greatest Government In The History Of The World, and (privately) a wild party for whichever clique will be pillaging taxpayers for the next four years.

For more sober observers, it's all a reminder that while you can watch once every four years for a few hours, Washington power is an ongoing series of daily -- and nightly -- parties to which you're generally not invited.

All modern day U.S. inaugurations, regardless of victorious party, are like this. George W. Bush's 2001 party, however, had a third element, an uninvited and largely unreported one, as studiously ignored by other partygoers as a loudly drunk neighbor the hosts hope will simply go home. Among the estimated 300,000 people that gathered in a light, raw rain at the Capitol and along Pennsylania Avenue, tens of thousands of people expressed their belief that the whole thing was a fraud.

These were the largest inaugural protests since the days of Nixon. In 1973, anti-inaugural crowds, assembling far away from the parade, were swelled by a well-organized movement angered by an unpopular war and Four More Years. In 2001, there was no such organization, and Dubya hadn't even had a chance to step in it with his new Oval Office boots yet.

But the protesters came from near and far, and, unlike 1973, they could get up close to the Pennsylvania Ave. festivities -- thanks to a 1997 court ruling allowing anti-abortion groups access to Bill Clinton's parade. This year, at least 20 different, mostly obscure groups made plans to protest. They had announced five different, distinct locations (or, just "along Pennsylvania Avenue") at which the confused anti-Bush citizen was to assemble.

Only five weeks previous, Al Gore's supporters, buoyed by the Florida Supreme Court ruling, believed they'd be the ones marching and partying. Instead, they were shivering, waving signs like "Count My Vote" and "Hail to the Thief," marginalized by the pervasive security apparati and disinterested networks.

Alongside the protesters angry about Florida and the Supreme Court were many others, concerned about a wide variety of issues that transcended Gore and Bush. The dozens of issues all melded into one message, unmistakably delivered in block after block of the parade route: George W. Bush had no right to pursue, as President, the policies he wants. He was, according to the words of one memorable sign, the illegitimate son.

It was difficult to gauge the size of the anti-Bush sentiment, and so mostly the networks and reporters and pundits didn't even try. They were content to mention it in passing, like some unfortunate -- yet unavoidable -- irritant, and content to get comments from appalled Bush supporters and adopt the Republican thesis that these were "sore losers." If so, the losers were everywhere, making up a large, and in many places a majority, percentage of the crowd.

In Bush's uninspiring, meandering, flatly delivered inaugural speech -- evoking nothing so much as a high school student rendering the speech his clueless father penned late the previous night -- he mentioned citizens sometimes seeming to "share a continent, not a country," a reference that could as easily refer to his divisive policy proposals. That was the new president's only gesture towards bringing back into the fold Americans embittered by the way he won the election. If anything, the prominent ceremonial role played by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), husband of a Cabinet nominee and primary architect of all opposition to campaign finance reform, suggested instead Dubya's fundamental contempt for the entire topic of electoral reform, and lack of concern for "healing."

The parade route was littered with people who will remember that lack of concern. As the Bushes rode and then walked up Pennsylvania Avenue, they passed solidly pro-Bush bleachers (these were the paid tickets, at $50 and up), alternating with blocks that were either mixed or -- especially nearer the White House -- solidly anti-Bush.

Somehow, this became, according to one radio reporter, "hundreds of protesters;" according to most others, at best a few thousand. The Washington Post managed to work in the familiar reference to protesters' piercings. But the anti-Bush signs were much, much more widespread, and their bearers more demographically varied than most inaugural coverage suggested.

Such dismissiveness both missed the point and the significance of the demonstrations, and showed starkly how difficult it will be for citizen groups alarmed by one or another Bush policy in the next four years to get themselves heard. With the exception of the National Organization for Women -- which comprised a boisterous pro-choice cluster between 8th and 9th Streets -- the traditional Democratic Party constituencies one would expect to protest both the election and Bush's prospective policies were strikingly absent. Among the protests, there was no labor or environmental presence at all. Even vocal election critics like Jesse Jackson had taken a pass; Jackson, before scandal erupted, had planned to be at a rally in Tallahassee, far away from the cameras.

Instead, the election-themed protesters were mobilized through the Internet by vaporous "groups" like Votermarch.org and Countercoup.org, entities that had never met face to face and had come together expressly for the purpose of protesting the inaugural. Farther to the left, organizers like the Justice Action Movement (another anonymous acronym), International Action Center and the media celebrity of Rev. Al Sharpton helped bring people to D.C., but they themselves sported few, if any, "followers" in the traditional sense.

The inauguration's unprecedented heavy security -- the Secret Service ringed the parade route with ten security checkpoints all parade-goers had to pass through -- was in large part because nobody knew what to expect. As it turned out, the massive police presence was unnecessary, and the protests were exactly as advertised: an almost entirely peaceful display of opposition to Bush. Somehow, the lack of conflict between police and protesters, and the lack of prominent names attached to their cause, made the protesters' message less important to reporters.

But the lack of organizational backing made these protests more, not less, impressive. All the "sponsors" did was provide permits; tens of thousands of dissenters found their way to D.C. on their own volition, and without any apparent policy goal beyond the desire to display opposition to a regime that had not yet even taken office.

There was no legislation pending, no war raging, no recession (so far), and only a few weeks of "organizing" by groups, most of whom nobody has ever heard of. And yet tens of thousands came, and in cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, thousands more also protested.

Opponents of Dubya's policies will remember this; and they will remember that after having the election yanked out from under them, Congressional Democrats have displayed almost no opposition to an array of Bush Cabinet nominees that is anything but moderate and bipartisan. There is a potentially powerful movement brewing, but nobody is harnessing it, and nobody in power is championing it.

Yet.