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Protesters make waves at Bush coronation tea party
By
Jackson Thoreau
www.OpEdNews.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. – If you read most
mainstream media accounts, you’d think there wasn’t much of a
protest during Bush’s January 2005 coronation week.
You probably wouldn’t read about the
members of the national women’s peace group Code Pink, who obtained
tickets to the inauguration from their Congress reps and got up
close to Bush on Thursday as he strained to recall some memorized
lines. After Bush issued his standard propaganda about “spreading”
freedom in faraway lands like it was chicken feed as he took away
the same in his own country, Code Pinkers, including co-founders
Medea Benjamin, 51, and Jodie Evans, 50, unrolled anti-war banners
and shouted some better lines: "Champagne is flying while soldiers
are dying."
Dittobushies began chanting
themselves, causing Bush to appear shaken and stop his acting lines.
Some of the overkill army of police dragged the women away and let
most go, while holding Benjamin and Diane Wilson, 56, of Texas for
at least another day.
Score one for Bush opponents.
“Bush’s occupation of Iraq has led
to needless suffering of US soldiers and Iraqis, increased
anti-American sentiment globally and has made us less safe at home,”
said Benjamin, who has traveled to Iraq several times to witness the
reality of the occupation. “We spoke out because the Bush
administration needs to end the occupation of Iraq and its bellicose
policy towards Iran and other nations, and instead commit the United
States to the rule of law - including the U.S. Constitution and Bill
of Rights, the U.N. charter and the Geneva conventions.”
How bad was Bush’s speech? It was so
bad that media ass-kisser Michael Tackett of the Chicago Tribune
wrote about it in much more glowing terms than usual in an attempt
to disguise how bad it really was, calling Bush’s address the
“best-written and best-spoken of his presidency, with evocative
language and an uncharacteristically seamless, confident delivery.”
I’m a member of the mainstream
media, and it’s “reporters” like Tackett who give our profession a
bad name. His characterization of the speech was as embarrassing as
Bush’s disjointed, shallow delivery of it. Clinton’s inauguration
addresses gave people goosebumps. Bush just made people feel sorry
for him, if not sick.
John F. Harris of The Washington
Post was more honest than Tackett, pointing out how the speech
contained “almost no specifics” and “made scant acknowledgment of
the trade-offs” Bush has made, such as supporting repressive regimes
in Asia as payback for their support in Afghanistan.
Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright of
the Post added, “Bush's soaring rhetoric yesterday that the United
States will promote the growth of democratic movements and
institutions worldwide is at odds with the administration's
increasingly close relations with repressive governments in every
corner of the world.”
From the charade to the parade
Moving from the charade to the
parade, there seemed to be almost as many protesters along the route
as fur-coated and cowboy hat-clad supporters. Many supporters showed
they were as shallow as their candidate, as they just couldn’t take
the cold and having to submit to standing in line for a police check
and took off early to a hotel party.
That left it to some protesters to
stage a "die-in" with fake blood just outside the White House
grounds, even staying in the street as police cars drove around them
and a few dittobushies jeered at them. There were many signs on the
route, including a direct one held by Meredith Lair, 32, who had
just completed a doctorate in history at Pennsylvania State
University. Her sign read, "Mr. Bush, under my mittens I'm giving
you the finger."
A disturbance at 14th
Street and Pennsylvania Avenue involving some more aggressive
protesters who threw snowballs, including one that struck Cheney’s
vehicle, and yelled “Fuck Bush” and police that included tear gas,
pepper spray and beatings actually halted Bush’s motorcade.
Score another for Bush opponents.
“At one point, the fence
‘barrackades’ on Pennsylvania Avenue about a mile ahead of the
presidential parade were brought
down by demonstrators during a prolonged clash that first slowed the
president's motorcade, ultimately bringing it to a stand-still,”
wrote an account on Indymedia.org. “Moments before the motorcade
stopped, it was actually forced to speed up briefly in an attempt to
spare the president a prolonged exposure to an expanse of protesters
who dwarfed the numbers of Bush supporters on the parade route at
the site of the ANSWER rally.”
Earlier, a massive rally at Malcolm
X Park, sponsored by the D.C. Anti-War Network was followed by a
march of about 10,000 to McPherson Square. A second march from the
rally ended in civil disobedience at Lafayette Park in front of the
White House.
Participants from those marches
ended up battling police, who also reportedly fired rubber bullets
or pepper balls at protesters. Police reported one officer suffered
a broken arm in a conflict that included even journalists and
dittobushies being pepper sprayed.
Penny wrote on Indymedia that she
merely stood at 14th and Pennsylvania with no sign well away from
the barricades and fence, and she was pepper sprayed.
“I was determined to simply stand
there as long as I was able,” Penny wrote. “It was still a surprise
to me when the man who had ordered me to step back sprayed me in the
face anyway. I stood there, getting sprayed, for as long as I could,
until there was so much gas and pepper in the air that I couldn't
breathe anymore and had to retreat.”
Welcome to the vision of Bush World,
where even those who just stand there, and those who support the
ruler, get pepper sprayed. Wake up, America.
More marches
After the parade, many protesters
marched up Massachusettes Avenue towards Union Station, where police
hit them with motorcycles, DC Indymedia reported. After making it to
Union Station, they confronted Republicans clad in tuxedos and gowns
who were going to parties. At least one fight broke out, and the
protester was arrested but not the Republican, Indymedia wrote.
I missed that fight but got into
several verbal confrontations myself with dittobushies at Union
Station as I shoved my “Party On Like It’s 1929” sign in their smug
faces. Some fellow protesters told them to go to Iraq and called
them cowards, which I avoided doing, just wanting to get across a
message. At least one Bush partier remarked that my sign was
“clever,” and I replied, “Well then, why do you support Bush?” He
just walked on.
Bush’s motorcade actually passed us
by, and we turned our back and waved our signs at it, as police
yelled at us to remain motionless. It was a total police state, the
nazi dream realized. Anyone who thinks the U.S. really stands for
freedom needed to try just walking through the D.C. streets on this
night.
Yet another march made its way up
Columbia Road through Adams Morgan, trying to get to the Washington
Hilton's Inaugural Ball. But police arrested many for no reason,
hauling them away on buses. Some of those arrested were pepper
sprayed by police even after they were adequately restrained,
Indymedia reported.
Freedom? Et tu, Bush?
"He says he's bringing freedom to
the world, and we're getting pepper-sprayed for our First
Amendment rights. That's kind of
ironic," Dustin, 22, a National Institutes of Health employee, told
Reuters.
The barricades made it difficult to
drive through D.C., but I scooted through several blocked-off
streets just to see if I could do it. I made it to a prime parking
space near the Platinum Club to “party on like it’s 1929” at the
Billionaires for Bush counter-inaugural party. As I got out of my
car, another attendee asked how I got to that spot. “At some point,
you just have to risk it and break through some of those barriers,”
I replied. If just to show the Bushies that they can’t control you
all the time.
The party was a great event, as the
festive music, hip sarcasm of the tuxedo and gown wearing
“billionaires” and camaraderie almost made me forget the lack of
freedom and the pettiness outside. Some 91 percent of D.C. voted
against Bush last November. That’s why he made them pay $17 million
for his parties. Fuck Bush, indeed.
Drunk, obnoxious Republicans display
their ‘family values’ in D.C.
Republicans like to harp on “family
values” that usually don’t include alcohol and prostitutes, but they
engaged in plenty of both this week. Some made racist comments as
they rode the subway. Others yelled “four more years” in bystanders’
faces. Others shouted “loser” at John Kerry, who made himself as
inconspicuous as possible.
Many hypocritically and callously
criticized protesters’ conduct and ignored their own drunken,
fur-wearing orgies of excess during this time of great needs. One
mink-and-pearl-wearing Republican wrote on a Washington Post site
that she was “embarrassed” for the protesters and cattily advised
young female protesters that “if they would wash their hair and put
on a little make-up, then they might not have to go out and get
pepper-sprayed to get attention.”
She just doesn’t get it. We weren’t
there to get attention. We were there to send a message. We’re sick
and tired of the crass crap and cynical policies of this
administration. And we’re fighting back.
From Bridgewater, Mass., to San
Francisco, protesters sent Bush and his dittobushies the message.
"Not Our President," "Drop Bush Not Bombs" and "Hail To The Thief,”
read some of those messages.
D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams just
doesn’t get it, either. He, too, criticized protesters for the few
who shouted obscenities. Then Williams himself hypocritically ripped
off an obscenity to a reporter.
"It really does piss me off that
people are so selfish that they can't give [Bush] this one day,"
Williams said.
Selfish? We’re out there giving
everything we have so more people can just survive as Bush and his
supporters rape the national treasury, make a mockery of fiscal
restraint, lay off more workers, strip people of their rights, push
for more tax breaks for the billionaires and millionaires, plan to
invade more countries to further neocon empire dreams.
And WE are selfish because we REFUSE
to not send Bush a message on the best chance we have to send that
message this year?
Pissed off doesn’t begin to cover
it.
Washington Post society columnist
Richard Leiby put the high-octane partying this way: “All I saw all
week was drunken partying by big-shot lobbyists and donors. I saw
more stretch limos than I've ever seen in D.C., even during World
Bank/IMF summits.”
A D.C. resident added, “I've never
seen so much fur in all of my life. It seemed that everywhere I
went, women were draped in animal hides.”
And protesters are SELFISH?
Back in my elementary school and
junior high history classes, my teachers spoke reverently of the
Boston Tea Party as a watershed event in our country’s history that
led to the birth of this nation. During that tea party, protesters
destroyed property and engaged in violence against another King
George. Most people living in the colonies did not support them then
– they called them anarchists, said they were embarrassing, said
they were selfish and worse.
And they are now seen as heroes.
One day, the tide will turn. Our day
will come.
Stay strong as the dittobushies
party on like it’s 1929.
Jackson Thoreau, a Washington, D.C.-area journalist, contributed to
Big Bush Lies, published by RiverWood Books and available in
bookstores across the country. Thoreau's latest electronic book, The
Strange Death of the Woman Who Filed a Rape Lawsuit Against Bush &
Other Things the Bush Administration Doesn't Want You to Know, can
be read at
http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/know.html. He can be reached at
jacksonthor@yahoo.com or jacksonthor@juno.com.
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