Inauguration Report
  by Jay (Super_Steve) and Shawn

First off, I would like to thank Bart, Neal, Don, Kronos, Jim for all their hard work to get this off the ground.
The signs looked fantastic and were well received by protesters.

We arrived at the 7th street entrance to the parade at around 9 AM.  There was already a large crowd of people waiting to get in through security.  This was one of two entrances to the section that ANSWER was given for protesting.  I would estimate that the crowd was probably easily 40-50% protesters, 10-20% republican and the rest fairly neutral.  We had a total of almost 400 signs that we started handing out.  People immediately came up to us, wallets out, asking how much they were. They were surprised when we said we were giving them away.  The news media also showed interest in the sign giveaway.  We were interviewed, photographed, and filmed by the NY Times, Reuters, AP, and several smaller or independent news outlets at that time.

The sign giveaway also attracted the attention of the Bush supporters.  We were all surprised by the level of anger and bitterness of the Bushies.  You would think the election went the other way, considering how happy, excited, and jovial the protestors were and how pissed off the Bush supporters were.  As we were handing out the “Worst President Ever” signs, a very, very uptight young man came up to me and asked if I really thought Bush was worse than Martin Van Buren.  Martin Van Buren?? WTF? I can honestly say I have never laughed so hard at someone directly to his face before.  I didn’t feel that his question merited a response, so I continued about my business. Red-faced and sputtering, he walked off.  An obviously Republican woman came up and asked me for a sign.  When I asked her what she wanted it for, she smirked, and said snidely that it would be good to sit on.  I told her that if she wanted to put her ass on Bush’s face, that was fine with me. Needless to say, that put a dent in her pompousness, as she angrily told me that wasn’t the point. I told her she should make her points more cogently, and then wondered if I should explain what “cogent” meant.  In the third interaction of note, a man came up to take issue with our opposition of the war. He said he supported war, if meant killing all the bad guys.  I pointed out that we were also killing a lot of Iraqi civilians, including children. Did he think three-year-old Iraqi children were the “bad guys?” To my surprise, he said yes. Apparently, he advocated killing ALL Muslims, and it was better to get them when they were young. Another protestor asked why he wasn’t over there, if he felt so strongly. He looked rather indignant as he said, “I have two kids, I can’t risk myself!” I asked him if he realized that OTHER people with kids were over there, and other people’s kids were there, risking themselves. Then I asked him if we should just fire up the gas ovens and implement the “final solution” and told him he was a neo-nazi.  He retorted that I wouldn’t know a Nazi if I saw one.  I told him I saw one all right.  He stalked off.

After the signs had been distributed, we decided we should get in the security line ourselves, if we had any hopes of getting in to the parade route. By around noon, it became apparent that we were going nowhere.  I ran down to see if the Third street checkpoint was going any faster.  That checkpoint was just as clogged and stagnant as the Seventh Street one.  I began to get suspicious; the two checkpoints the protestors were trying to use were not moving at all and hardly anyone was getting into the parade route.  The only consolation was that the Bush supporters who had tickets for the actual swearing-in were not getting through either. Tempers were flaring when they realized protestors were preventing them from seeing the coronation of their boy.

Jay and I decided to go farther down Pennsylvania to see if the (non-protestor) checkpoints were any better.  As we walked down the street, signs held high, we attracted a lot of attention.  It’s an odd sight to see older women (and a few men!) in full length fur coats (there was soooo much fur!), perfectly coiffed blonde hair-helmets, and tons of make-up spew a string of profanities.  But we seemed to have that effect on them.  It just made us smile and laugh.  And for some reason, it didn’t help when I told them to stop being so angry and bitter. That only seemed to make them more angry.  A lot of the Bush supporters would try to bait us with snide comments, but we refused to take the bait.  If they wanted to boil all political discourse down to a “Nah na na na Nah Nah” debate, fine, but I refused to participate. If they had something to say, they could speak to us like adults.

We neared the 13th street checkpoint, and lo and behold! There was ABSOLUTELY NO LINE. We walked right in.  This area contained about 90% of Bush supporters, and just a handful of protestors. So of course, the news media immediately came over to us for interviews.  I left Jay to deal with the media, and went out to tell all the protestors I ran into to use this checkpoint to gain access to the parade route.  When I came back, I had the most interesting run-in with a Bush supporter. A man wearing an American flag button-up shirt, American flag sweatpants, bandana, and hat, came up to me and yelled at me for protesting.  He yelled that he was from Yugoslavia and the communists wouldn’t let people protest and he hated the communists. I told him I was confused by his argument.  We shouldn’t protest because people in communist countries can’t protest? Isn’t that one of the reasons we SHOULD protest? The man kept yelling and jabbing his fingers at me and shaking his fist.  He spoke with a heavy accent that only worsened as he become increasingly angry.  Between his accent and his nonsensical “arguments,” I was thoroughly confused.  I just smiled and calmly told him that I respected his right to share his opinions, and I was only exercising my constitutional right to share mine.  At this point he got a few inches from my face and called me stupid and evil and similar epithets.  After I refused to respond in kind, he finally calmed down a bit. Eventually, I got him to admit that I had every right to be there protesting, and that it was OK if we disagreed on the issues.

After about an hour on the parade route, we decided to go back to the area around Seventh street, where most of the protestors were. As we were walking down the street, we saw huge crowds of protestors and Bush supporters headed our way.  It was such a strange sight to see the men in suits and the women in furs intermingled with protestors with blue Mohawks and multiple face piercings. I stopped one of the protestors to see what was going on.  Apparently, a group of anarchists had stormed the security checkpoint, and the cops went ballistic. The cops had started beating protestors with clubs and dousing them with pepper spray. The were completely locking down the area around the 7th street checkpoint.

At this point, Jay and I decided we were exhausted, and Neal, Don, and their friends had to start heading back to the airport to catch their flight back to California.  We decided to head back home and watch the motorcade on tv.  It was such a neat feeling to watch Bush’s limo go down Pennsylvania road with all of the bartcop signs behind him, knowing we had played a part in it! You can make a difference!  I knew Bush was in that limo, looking at all of our signs.  There was no way either Bush or the media could try to minimize the presence of all the people showing their disapproval of the Worst President Ever.
 

Jay, thanks for doing all you did.
I know it wasn't easy.



 

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