|
Hail
To The Thief:
Commemorating Inaugural Theft, January 20, 2001
PART II: "SHAME! SHAME!" | PART I
A
TWO-PART RETROSPECTIVE
Exclusively
for Buzzflash
by Hallie@womanhattan
While waiting for the parade to start, my buddy Mike and I had a lot of time to look at all the creative signs on both sides of the route.
The word "Bush" over a depiction of Edvard Munch's "scream"
"Steal a loaf of bread, go to jail. Steal an Election, go to the White House."
"Another Texan Democrat Bush-whacked again!"
"Gore got Bushwhacked!" (That was the only reference to Gore that I noticed.")
"Illegitimable."
Sign shaped like a fish: "Something's Fishy."
"Ctl. Alt. Delete"
"The People Have Spoken. All Five of Them."
(pic of Supreme Court 5): "Our Vote Counts. All Five of Them."
"Bushit"
"Selected, not elected."
"'I dissent.'”
When the marching band across the street started to play Parliament's "We Want the Funk," I started to dance and sing the words: "there's a whole lot of rhythm goin' down." When someone jokingly commented that I shouldn't be dancing to a band celebrating Bush's inauguration, I pointed out that the hapless band likely had no clue that they had selected a tune by George "Paint the White House Black" Clinton (no relation to the former president). Clinton whose upbeat party music belies a strong political message, also wrote a song called "Chocolate City" about Washington, D.C. -- "C.C.," as he called it. "We've got New York, we've got Detroit, I hear we've even got LA!" he rapped in 1977. "They've still got the White House but that's only a temporary condition. Are you with me, C.C.?...you don't need the bullet when you got the ballot...and don't be surprised to find out Ali is in the White House...Stevie Wonder, secretary of fine arts, and Aretha Franklin, the First Lady." Now some hack high school band was playing a George Clinton tune to celebrate someone's inauguration after mass disfranchisement of black voters in the Deep South. Well, I appreciated dramatic irony, but I wasn't going to stand by silently while some low-rent school band co-opted a George Clinton tune! I continued to dance and hum along.
Occasionally the cops would move the barricades to let groups of GOP revelers cross Pennsylvania Avenue on their way to the ceremony. Who invited the cast of Dallas? The large numbers of VIP attendees were unmistakable: men with stetsons and tuxes and women with big hair and huge fur coats passed. (The inaugural festivities were sponsored by Enron.) Mike recognized a guy in a motorized wheelchair among those headed to the inauguration as James Brady.
The crowd amused ourselves by devising chants that rippled up and down the parade route: "It's cloudy! it's rainy! And we hate Cheney!" "Bush Sucks...Dick Sucks..." and "I love Bush! I love Dick!" That was as profane as it got.
A few minutes before around Noon (the time Bush was scheduled to take the oath) a voice announced over the p.a. system: "Brace yourselves...the temperature is about to drop 10 degrees." And sure enough it did. To below freezing. Umbrellas went up as it started to thunder and pour. But ever since our team leader Perry had told us that the weather was on our side, I got a rush from the cold and damp. The crowd seemed to become energized by the weather too, save for the Bush supporters, who by now were outnumbered about 10 to 1. The nearby risers, which were reserved for Bush supporters, were close to empty. Twice the thin crowd riser crowd mustered a faint cheer, but were quickly drowned out by boos.
Two women in suits suddenly appeared, hoisting a huge, expensive-looking cloth banner with a photo of Bush and Laura that said "Welcome to the White House, Laura and George!" It occurred to me that while all the protesters' signs were homemade, the only Republican signs I had seen were professionally printed, like the color "Bush/Cheney" banners" and this fancy piece of cloth. "Hey!" I heckled. "That's a mighty expensive-looking piece of cloth!" This drew the crowd's attention to the sign: "Hey, that sign is not regulation size!" they chimed in. Indeed it was not, which the protesters pointed out to security. Security was compelled to speak to the two women, who were gone within minutes.
The parade started: majorettes, high school bands, other groups, all soldiering down Pennsylvania Avenue, battling rain and gusts of cold wind. As if on cue, it started to hail when the presidential motorcade appeared, and the crowd started chanting "Hail to the Thief!!" Magically, the motorcade stopped for a couple of minutes while the chanting continued; it turned out that a secret service convoy needed to catch up with the presidential limo. I found out later that the presidential limo happened to stop at a point on the route that was as friendly as we were, and so George and Laura had to endure two minutes of "Hail to the Thief" and boos until the convoy caught up. The motorcade resumed. Within a couple of minutes, the presidential limo appeared. As it approached, the crowd booed very loudly. When it passed, the crowd pointed our thumbs downward and chanted "Shame! Shame!" in unison. (I heard later that there were some middle fingers in the crowd, but I did not see any.) It is customary for the newly inaugurated president and first lady to get out of the limo and walk part of the inaugural route, but we knew it wouldn't be happenin' this time. When the media convoy passed, we continued to boo and give the thumbs down. Unfortunately, we were still doing it when the military passed, although the crowd seemed to catch and check itself. "Hey! We don't want to be booing them! They're just doing their job!"
With the ceremony over and the motorcade on its way to the White House, the "Enron crowd" -- men in soaked Stetsons, women with big hair, heavy makeup, and floor-length furs, were crossing Pennsylvania Avenue in large numbers to get to their various parties. By now the fur coats were drenched, making the women look more like sewer rats than society ladies in murdered mink and chinchilla. Emboldened by the protesting crowd, I heckled: "Hey, that's my dog Fifi you're wearing! I've been looking for him everywhere!" as the ladies pretended to ignore me. When three cops passed I said "Officer, I've just witnessed a man stealing the presidency -- could you please investigate"? but the cops kept a straight face. The festivities over and our joints thoroughly numb, my buddy and I decided to make our way back to the warm bus. Protesters and celebrants alike waited in line at the Metro turnstile. I stood behind one of the fur-wearers, the wet hairs of her coat bunched into needles. Later I would see images on television of dolled up inaugural spectators covered with clear plastic, but it didn't seem to help.
On the way back to the stadium parking lot, we again passed the tent with the inaugural party. I peeked in at the arriving guests and the poster with the inane slogan--it wasn't "Prosperity with a Purpose" but something equally banal and destined to be moot within a year. I flashed my sign at the incoming guests -- "Stop Thief!" and Mike and I continued on our way. Back on the bus, we shared stories and compared notes. We found out that not all the regulation-size "illegitimate" banners had made it past the checkpoints. Our volunteer team leader said the teams turned away should have kept trying other checkpoints until they got in, but I guess they didn't want to spend all day waiting in line at checkpoints.
The pair sitting behind us on the bus had decided to protest at the inauguration itself, where they were way outnumbered by attendees, who laughed and taunted the protesters. Protesting among a hostile crowd for hours was kind of demoralizing. I told them that if they'd been on the parade route, it would have been a very different scene. But if my buddy and I had an easier time morale-wise (after the first half hour of being heckled), we missed a performance by the Radical Cheerleaders and other entertaining street theater.
At the newsstand back at Penn Station in New York, we got a glimpse of the front page of the next day's Times (January 21st). A banner headline about the inauguration, another story about the speech, headlines about parties, stories about King George I wiping a tear from his eye, the awful weather...NOTHING about the protests. Two hippies were buying something from the newsstand. Since they were obviously coming from Washington as well, I pointed this out to them. The young woman studied it for a second. "That's the bulls--t," she said solemnly. On the subway home, I was still outraged: how could the Times mislead its readers like that? Even the letter of mine that the Times had printed had been considerably softened, and all my criticism of the Times' pre-inauguration coverage deleted. But I was still glad I went to Washington, even if the mass media was already conspiring to pretend the inauguration had gone off without a hitch. I may now be living in a country with an unelected leader, I said to myself, but I'm still living in a country where public dissent is allowed. And I have to exercise that right as long as I still have it. It is my patriotic duty.
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