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Yesterday, George W. Bush was inaugurated to his second term. Meanwhile, me and a couple thousand of my fellow Portlanders took to the streets in protest. There were three small marches that converged on the North Park Blocks and became one giant march through the downtown streets.
One march was the women from Code Pink, which is a feminist activist group. They all dressed in pink outfits and wore tinfoil hats on their heads, sarcastically signifying our belief that there needs to be serious electoral reform – it’s a joke on all the righties who think we’re conspiracy theorists that think there was a conspiracy to steal the election (again) for Dubya.
Another march was from labor, and a third march of students joined us. It was an awesome sight, with your usual mix of radical lesbians, old hippies, college kids, and teenage anarchists with ridiculous haircuts. There were the drummers keeping the beat and few people with megaphones yelling out the chants: “hey hey, ho ho, George Bush has got to go”, “This is what democracy looks like”, “not our president, not our war”, and more.
I was most impressed with the parents who brought their children to the march. I know some might think it is a slightly risky thing to do, especially as protests sometimes get a little rough in Portland. But that wasn’t even close to reality in this protest. I think it is a good lesson to teach the young: that they can make their voices heard and have a First Amendment right to protest their government.
The protest weaved peacefully through the streets. People came out of their workplaces and leaned out from upper-floor windows to cheer us on. At one point there was a group of Bush supporters — maybe a dozen of them. One had a sign reading “Except for slavery, fascism, genocide, and communism… war never solves anything!” Another said something like “support Islamic property rights [a picture of a woman in a burqa] get US out of the Middle East.” A few of us stopped to taunt them, but we mostly ignored them.
I did see one teenaged Bush supporter walking along the route, harassing a couple of middle-aged women in the march who were yelling back at him. As I approached, I could hear them saying something about fascism and him yelling back about fascism, and after he said the word about seven times, I calmly asked him, “excuse me, son, do you even know what fascism means?” He said something about us comparing Bush to Hitler. I corrected him, “no, Hitler was National Socialism. Fascism arose in the 1930’s in Italy with the government of Benito Mussolini. It signifies a merging of corporate and government interests. It is essentially a government of, by, and for corporations.” To which he replied, “no it isn’t!” I told him he really needed to get himself into a 20th Century History class and buy a good dictionary.
As the march finished, we were all hearded back into the park across from the federal courthouse. The last few stragglers would not clear 3rd Avenue, so the police van approached with its speakers blaring “This is the Portland Police. Protestors on the street, please clear the way for traffic. Move into the park.” Then came the lines of cops in the full riot gear, backed by the armored-up horses. After some time, they had to start pushing the kids back into the park. The rest of us on the sidewalk all had cameras and videocameras honing in on the action. Then the cops stayed there in the street maintaining the skirmish line between us and the courthouse. One protestor with a bullhorn sarcastically yelled, “Portland Police, please clear the way for traffic, go back to your office.” I felt the police did an excellent job of controlling the crowd and not escalating tensions.
In the center of the park, the protestors who had carried upside-down American flags gathered and people formed a circle around them. One guy set his flag ablaze, to the cheers of half the crowd and the stunned silence of the other half. When a second flag was about to be burned, a man came out from the crowd and asked the other man not to do it. It didn’t burn. I’m of a mixed mind about flag burning. Of course I think it is our free speech right to do so, and it is a strong political statement. But I also know that of all the great images and serious concerns we raise as protestors, the media will focus on that burning flag and the messages will be ignored by the folks that are outraged by the flag burning.
I have 105 pictures up on my photo gallery – click the link to see more pictures. Some of my favorite signs and sights:
“Fox: News for Dumb Fux”
A man in a Bush mask wearing black-and-white striped prison outfit with the sign “I belong in prison”
Another man in a Bush mask wearing a suit with a sign reading “Thanks Wally O’Dell! Thanks Diebold!”
“Jail to the Thief”
“Bush Legacy: Leave no child a dime”
“Just another Pagan Dyke Union Member praying for the Rapture”
“When your leading industrial export is weapons of war, what is your global marketing strategy”
“War is late-term abortion”
“Illegitimate – Illiterate – Illegal – King George”
“I support my daughters and other soldier’s right to life [picture of her daughter in the US Army]”
“$40 million on new clothes and the emporer is still naked”
“Somewhere in Texas a village is missing its idiot”
“Who Would Jesus Bomb?”
“Bush is to Christianity what Bin Ladin is to Islam”
“Yo! Evangelicalism is the crack cocaine of the ignorant masses!” [smaller paragraphs of many many Bush Admin failures surrounding a cartoon of a bunch of rednecks saying,] “That be okeydoke s’long as HOMOS can’t git married!”
[Little six-year-old boy with sign] “Don’t fight Mr. Bush – play nice.”
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