Friday 21 January 2005

    Washington - Flag-draped coffins and jeering anti-war protesters competed
with pomp and circumstance on Thursday at the inauguration of President Bush
along the snow-dusted, barricaded streets of central Washington.

    As the president's motorcade made its way down Pennsylvania Avenue from
the Capitol to the White House amid the tightest security in inaugural history,
thousands of protesters along the parade route and nearby downtown streets
booed, chanted slogans and carried placards condemning Bush's policies at
home and abroad.

    Some turned their back as the president drove slowly past. Others yelled,
"George Bush, you can't hide. We charge you with genocide." Among the forest
of protest signs, some read "Blood is on your hands" and "Iraq is Arabic for
Vietnam." Others called for electoral reform, gay rights, abortion rights and the
use of renewable energy.

    "There are a lot of people dying overseas for nothing and I'm here to get my
voice heard," said Bill Coffelt, 40, an engineer from Fairfax, Va.

    Protesters also traded insults with the more numerous, cheering Bush
supporters, many of whom wore fur coats and paid for the best viewing
spots at the first inaugural parade since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

    In one area, police briefly sought to disperse with pepper spray demonstrators
who hurled bottles, trash and snowballs at officers while trying to break through
a security fence holding them back from the parade.

    At least one snowball hit Vice President Dick Cheney's limousine, and Bush's
limousine sped up to get past the commotion.

    One group of protesters carried hundreds of mock coffins along 16th Street,
a downtown thoroughfare leading to the White House, to remind Americans of
the mounting casualties in Iraq.

    And an American flag was set alight just outside a security checkpoint at
13th and Pennsylvania.

    "It's beyond comprehension the damage this man has done," said Meredith
Lair, 32, who just completed a doctorate in history at Pennsylvania State
University. "I think it's horrifying what we're doing to Iraq," said Lair, who was
carrying a sign that read, "Mr. Bush, under my mittens I'm giving you the finger."

    Isolated Scuffles

    Police said there were at least 13 arrests, two for assaulting an officer and the
rest for disorderly conduct or other violations. One was a man who embarrassed
police four years ago by sneaking past security to get a handshake from Bush.
He did not get a chance for another grip this inauguration.

    Police also scuffled with about 30 protesters two streets away from the
parade route, using pepper spray and batons to disperse the group of self-styled
anarchists, who wore bandannas to hide their faces.

    "He (Bush) says he's bringing freedom to the world, and we're getting
pepper-sprayed for our First Amendment rights. That's kind of ironic,"
said 22-year-old Dustin, who works for the National Institutes of Health
and did not want to give his full name.

    Just outside the White House grounds, 17 protesters staged a "die-in."
After shouting a chant of "Stop the killing, stop the war," they dropped to the
pavement one by one as one of them began reading a list of those killed in Iraq.

    One spectator apparently found the act so credible that he began
administering CPR. Others were less sympathetic.

    "I hope you don't get up. I hope you freeze your ass off," said another, who
was among a group heading toward the parade-viewing grandstands nearest
the White House.

    Throughout the city, thousands of police and military troops were on patrol
with bomb-sniffing dogs, and spectators had to pass through metal detectors
before attending any inaugural events or heading to the parade.

    Police sealed off 100 blocks around the White House and parade route,
barring all traffic except official security and police cars.

    Demonstration organizers had complained they were not being given
adequate access to protest, while Bush supporters were granted prime
locations along the parade route.

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NYTimes.com

Demonstrators Revel in Opposition

on Big Day for President

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

Published: January 21, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 - For all their disgust with President Bush's inauguration, protesters could hardly have been happier. They screamed. They chanted. They held up signs. They got their message onto national television.

And when Mr. Bush's motorcade rolled right past them on Pennsylvania Avenue at Fourth Street shortly after 3 p.m., they let him have it with all the invective they could muster.

"Racist, sexist, antigay. Bush and Cheney, go away."

That was one chant from the largest crowd of demonstrators on the parade route as Mr. Bush passed. Through the darkened windows of his limousine, it appeared that he and Mrs. Bush were waving to the crowd anyway.

At least 13 people were arrested by late Thursday night after a variety of incidents, some far from the parade route, which took the presidential party from the Capitol to the White House. At least one woman, naked but for red, white and blue underpants, was hustled off Pennsylvania Avenue near 12th Street by the authorities, and several demonstrators (fully clothed) were driven back from barricades by pepper spray near Seventh Street and taken into custody.

But none of the incidents dampened the mood of protest organizers who declared the day a resounding success.

"We think this is a significant achievement for the antiwar movement," said Brian Becker, national coordinator of a protest coalition called Act Now to Stop the War and End Racism, or Answer. "We have bleachers, a stage, a sound system, and we're right along the parade route. We feel we have succeeded."

Never before had the Park Service granted a protest group dedicated space for the inaugural parade, organizers said, and Mr. Becker's coalition filled it with thousands of people who were as close to Mr. Bush as those who came to cheer him.

For hours before the procession began, they waited in the cold, listening to a succession of speakers who complained about administration policies involving Cuba, Iran, housing, Venezuela, health care, jobs, Social Security, same-sex marriage, Afghanistan and North Korea.

But mostly the tirades, as well as the signs and banners, attacked the administration for its involvement in Iraq. One sign read, "How many lives per gallon?" Another said, "Who would Jesus bomb?" Yet another said, "Torture is not a moral value." One more: "Iraq. Tomb of the Unknown Exit Strategy."

Ramsey Clark, an antiwar figure who served as attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson, appeared early and told the crowd that the Bush administration had "made the world a more dangerous place."

"It's because of what we've done and what we're doing right now," Mr. Clark said, adding, "Impeachment now is essential to the integrity of the U.S. government and the people of the United States."

While the protesters mixed with Bush supporters in many other areas along the parade route, no place had a bigger concentration than the Fourth Street location, within sight of Mr. Bush's swearing in. It quickly became a fault line of American political sentiment as ticketholders from the swearing-in ceremony just blocks away walked through a gantlet of tormentors in search of their seats for the parade.

One man wearing anti-Bush buttons screamed, "Scum," into the ear of an elderly woman, a Bush supporter. The man walking behind her punched him in the face. Some of the Bush supporters laughed off the taunting; others looked terrified.

The numbers of protesters along Pennsylvania Avenue might have been greater, but the swarm of people trying to pass through security checkpoints made it hard to reach the parade route quickly.

Bill Wolf, 47, a protester from Ringoes, N.J., who carried a sign that said, "War Mongers," said he had waited in line an hour to get in.

"It's overkill to the extreme," he said about the procedure. "I think it was designed specifically to suppress dissent and keep out protesters. They want to control the visual image as part of an effort to mislead the American people about the level of opposition to this administration. They're trying to make it a coronation, and it's not."
NYT

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To the Editor:

I am an American in Paris. I was struck by Thomas L. Friedman's comments ("An American in Paris," column, Jan. 20) that Europeans generally made a distinction between Americans and President Bush's government, but now that he has been re-elected, it changes our reception somewhat.

Beyond the shock and dismay most Europeans I meet have about Mr. Bush's election, I have felt little personal animosity directed toward me as an American.

Some Europeans I know appreciated the "we're sorry" messages that have exploded on the Internet as an apology to the world for this embarrassing election. Nonetheless, I know that, thanks expressly to Mr. Bush's policies, there are parts of the world I cannot safely visit with my United States passport.

A gray cloud hangs over America, and consequently, the rest of the world. I only hope for my son's sake that the damage Mr. Bush's policies create for America will not be irreparable.

Christopher Mack
Paris, Jan. 20, 2005
NYT

To the Editor:

I agree wholeheartedly with President Bush and William Safire that we should endeavor to spread freedom ("Bush's 'Freedom Speech,' " column, Jan. 21).

What I don't understand, however, is how the president can be in favor of freedom in the abstract but oversee policies that are so opposed to liberty in the particular.

How is imprisoning suspects without charging them with a crime an advancement of freedom? How is sequestering dissident voices, thereby making the remainder of public space a zone of restricted speech, an advancement of freedom?

How is treating prisoners as outside the protections of the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions an advancement of freedom?

If President Bush is sincerely interested in combating tyranny, a laudable goal, he might think twice about some of the policies he has enacted - policies that to many appear to be much more in the service of tyranny than of freedom.

Jonathan Maskit
Granville, Ohio, Jan. 21, 2005
NYT

To the Editor:

While President Bush was on the podium using the word "free" and "freedom" repeatedly, protesters outside the gate were corralled by police lines.

The president said that when people stand for freedom, the United States would stand with them, but when I tried to stand peaceably and alone, holding a sign that said "Zero Tolerance for Torture," I was told by a police officer to stay on the sidewalk. I asked, "Why do I have to move?," since the street had been opened for pedestrian traffic. In response, he took my arm and pushed me to the curb, where a police line of 10 officers held me there.

It was evident that my freedom of expression and movement does not hold the same importance as that of those affiliated with the administration, who were allowed to walk and talk freely.

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The Speech Misheard Round the World

Cambridge, Mass. — SINCE 9/11, President Bush and his advisers have engaged in a series of arguments concerning the relation between freedom, tyranny and terrorism. The president's inaugural paean to freedom was the culmination of these arguments.

The stratagem began immediately after 9/11 with the president's claims that the terrorist attacks were a deliberate assault on America's freedom. The next stage of the argument came after no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, thus eliminating the reason for the war, and it took the form of a bogus syllogism: all terrorists are tyrants who hate freedom. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who hates freedom. Therefore Saddam Hussein is a terrorist whose downfall was a victory in the war against terrorism.

When this bogus syllogism began to lose public appeal, it was shored up with another flawed argument that was repeated during the campaign: tyranny breeds terrorism. Freedom is opposed to tyranny. Therefore the promotion of freedom is the best means of fighting terrorism.

Promoting freedom, of course, is a noble and highly desirable pursuit. If America were to make the global diffusion of freedom a central pillar of its foreign policy, it would be cause for joy. The way the present administration has gone about this task, however, is likely to have the opposite effect. Moreover, what the president means by freedom may get lost in translation to the rest of the world.

The administration's notion of freedom has been especially convenient, and its promotion of it especially cynical. In the first place, there is no evidence to support, and no good reason to believe, that Al Qaeda's attack on America was primarily motivated by a hatred of freedom. Osama bin Laden is clearly no lover of freedom, but this is an irrelevance. The attack on America was motivated by religious and cultural fanaticism.

Second, while it may be implicitly true that all terrorists are tyrants, it does not follow that all tyrants are terrorists. The United States, of all nations, should know this. Over the past century it has supported a succession of tyrannical states with murderous records of oppression against their own people, none of which were terrorist states - Argentina and Brazil under military rule, Augusto Pinochet's Chile, South Africa under apartheid, to list but a few. Today, one of America's closest allies in the fight against tyranny is tyrannical Pakistan, and one of its biggest trading partners is the authoritarian Communist regime of China.

Third, while the goal of promoting democracy is laudable, there is no evidence that free states are less likely to breed terrorists. Sadly, the very freedoms guaranteed under the rule of law are likely to shelter terrorists, especially within states making the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule. Transitional democratic states, like Russia today, are more violent than the authoritarian ones they replaced.

And even advanced democratic regimes have been known to breed terrorists, the best example being the United States itself. For more than half a century a terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan, flourished in this country. According to the F.B.I., three of every four terrorist acts in the United States from 1980 to 2000 were committed by Americans.

The president speaks eloquently and no doubt sincerely of freedom both abroad and at home. But it is plain for the world to see that there is a discrepancy between his words and his actions.

He claims that freedom must be chosen and defended by citizens, yet his administration is in the process of imposing democracy at the point of a gun in Iraq. At home, he seeks to "make our society more prosperous and just and equal," yet during his first term there has been a great redistribution of income from working people to the wealthy as well as declining real income and job security for many Americans. Furthermore, he has presided over the erosion of civil liberties stemming from the Patriot Act.

Is this pure hypocrisy - or is there another explanation for the discrepancy, and for Mr. Bush's perplexing sincerity? There is no gainsaying an element of hypocrisy here. But it is perhaps no greater than usual in speeches of this nature. The problem is that what the president means by freedom, and what the world hears when he says it, are not the same.

In the 20th century two versions of freedom emerged in America. The modern liberal version emphasizes civil liberties, political participation and social justice. It is the version formally extolled by the federal government, debated by philosophers and taught in schools; it still informs the American judicial system. And it is the version most treasured by foreigners who struggle for freedom in their own countries.

But most ordinary Americans view freedom in quite different terms. In their minds, freedom has been radically privatized. Its most striking feature is what is left out: politics, civic participation and the celebration of traditional rights, for instance. Freedom is largely a personal matter having to do with relations with others and success in the world.

Freedom, in this conception, means doing what one wants and getting one's way. It is measured in terms of one's independence and autonomy, on the one hand, and one's influence and power, on the other. It is experienced most powerfully in mobility - both socioeconomic and geographic.

In many ways this is the triumph of the classic 19th-century version of freedom, the version that philosophers and historians preached but society never quite achieved. This 19th-century freedom must now coexist with the more modern version of freedom. It does so by acknowledging the latter but not necessarily including it.

It is not that Americans have rejected the formal model of freedom - ask any American if he believes in democracy and a free press and he will genuinely endorse both. Rather it is that such abstract notions of freedom are far removed from their notion of what freedom means and how it is experienced.

The genius of President Bush is that he has acquired an exquisite grasp of this development in American political culture, and he can play both versions of freedom to his advantage. Because he so easily empathizes with the ordinary American's privatized view of freedom, the president was relatively immune from criticism that he disregarded more traditional measures of freedom like civil liberties. In the privatized conception of freedom that he and his followers share, the abuses of the Patriot Act play little or no part. (There are times, of course, when the president must voice support for the modern liberal version of freedom. The inaugural is such a day, "prescribed by law and marked by ceremony," as he ruefully noted.)

Yet while these inconsistencies may not bother the president's followers or harm his standing in America, they matter to the rest of the world. Few foreigners are even aware of America's hybrid conception of freedom, much less accepting of it. In most of the rest of the world, the president's inaugural address was heard merely as hypocrisy.

Orlando Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard, is the author of "Freedom in the Making of Western Culture" and a forthcoming book on the meaning of freedom in the United States.

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W.Post
washingtonpost.com

A Semi-Private Parade

Friday, January 21, 2005; Page A16

THERE WERE, in the end, protesters along the route of President Bush's inaugural parade. It is conceivable that the president might have even caught a glimpse of them. What there were not nearly enough of, however, were ordinary people: Washingtonians, out-of-towners or anyone at all who was neither a Bush donor with tickets to the bleachers nor a demonstrator with a permit to wave a sign. This was not an accident. In advance of the inauguration, the National Park Service granted the Presidential Inaugural Committee exclusive rights to nearly all of the sidewalk space along Pennsylvania Avenue, space to which the public had no access. When Post reporters asked the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security and the D.C. police this week where the public would be able to stand, no answer was forthcoming. Grudgingly, a Park Service spokesman said on Wednesday that the public might be able to find some open areas east of Seventh Street or west of 12th Street, a statement that did not exactly encourage casual parade-goers.

Reports from those who did try to attend varied. Some stood for hours in the cold, trying to get through checkpoints. Some reported swifter entrance. But many, we fear, simply didn't bother to go, discouraged by the unwelcoming atmosphere of the inauguration with the heaviest security in history, the negative advance publicity, the closed streets and the phalanx of police officers lined up to protect the politicians from the people. Maybe that's what the post-Sept. 11 world has to look like, but on a day ostensibly dedicated to the spread of freedom around the world, it wasn't the best advertisement for American freedom either.

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"Insurgents" Delay "Second Coming" of Bush

by DC IMC        21 Jan 2005

The dreams of the faithful who came to honor the Christian crusaders were shattered today amid chants and tear-gas, when what was expected to be a grand victory march down Pennsylvania Avenue descended into an embarassing public spectacle for the president that temporarily brought his motorcade to a complete hault. With all eyes on Washington, DC, viewers across the nation and around the world were treated to parade images of waffing smoke and pepper spray, as police battled protesters right on the inaugural motorcade route. 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. 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. Large signs designating the president a fascist and his actions war-crimes framed the presidential limousine, and on mainstream television the voices of commentators attempting to downplay the significance of the protests were drowned out by the loud and angry shouts of "Fuck Bush!"

This was followed almost immediately by a request from police to slow down the advancing parade due to a continuing confrontation between security forces and demonstrators several blocks ahead on Pennsylvania Avenue. Police used tear-gas and pepper spray in their attempts to clear the street, and several media outlets including CBS captured images of the clash. Yet other television stations like CNN refused to air these pictures, focusing on the parade route while their commentators actually stated that they had no intention of "making too much" out of the displays of opposition.

The day began with a Critical Mass bike ride through DC early in the morning. A few hours later, a massive rally at Malcolm X Park, sponsored by the DC Anti-War Network (DAWN), was followed by a march to McPherson Square -- a march estimated by police to be 10,000 or more strong. A second march from the rally ended in civil disobedience at Lafayette Park, at the end of the parade route and in front of the White House.

Splinter marches broke off from the main DAWN march and moved into the city streets, and one of these groups met with extensive police violence including pepper-spray and battons, and there were several reports of some sort of projectiles being fired by police -- either rubber bullets or pepper-balls. DC Radio Co-Op reporter Darby Hickey, covering the protests from the field, was injured by the police actions.

During Bush's speech prior to the parade, Code Pink dropped a banner reading "Bring the Troops Home", but were quickly removed, as were several individuals who shouted other remarks in opposition to Bush. After the speech, the victory parade began, soon to be followed by the embarassment at one end of the parade route and large-scale fighting at the other end. During the large battle between police and demonstrators at 14th and Pennsylvania that halted the motorcade, there were injuries on both sides, with police reporting one officer with a broken arm. A stand-off set in, riot police lined up in front of protesters while tear-gas drifted in the air. Sixteen journalists had been pepper sprayed by the time calm resumed.

Several sets of protesters linked up to form a spontaneous and unpermitted march up Massachusettes Avenue towards Union Station. The march swelled and took up an entire lane of the avenue, and police moved in on motorcycles. The bikes were used to drive the marchers off the street, and several demonstrators were hit by police cycles in front of the Post Office on New York Avenue. While they were forced from the street itself, the marchers still made it to Union Station -- their destination, and the site of the so-called "Freedom Ball" for the Inaugural celebrations.

The mood outside Union Station became festive as the diverse group played music and regrouped, but shortly the arrival of Republican attendees of the Ball led to confrontations that included a fight between a demonstrator and a Republican -- the demonstrator being promptly arrested by police, and the Republican allowed to enter the party. Minutes later, another partygoer assaulted a photographer outside Ball, in full view of police who did nothing about the incident.

Late into the evening, yet another march started to form and make its way up Columbia Road through Adams Morgan. Protesters carrying torches (yes, torches) and chanting, "Bring the War Home" were on their way to the Washington Hilton's Inaugural Ball, when at least 100 riot police lined up at 18th and Belmont while all roads and allies off Columbia were closed. The marchers were pinned in, and police were not allowing them to leave. The march turned onto the only road out, 18th street, and were totally cut-off by the police. Two buses appeared on 18th street, and four more on Columbia Road, as police moved in and started to arrest demonstrators while a helicopter overhead spotlighted the entire scene.

DC Radio Co-Op reporter Darby Hickey was reporting live from the scene, and police approached and told her to "take a walk", a warning that was followed by physical assault when an officer shoved her. Protesters were still being arrested as the entire section of Columbia was totally shut down and 30 additional riot police marched into positions on the road. Shortly, the two buses were gone along with 100 to 150 protesters who were arrested. Two bank windows were left shattered as was at least one police cruiser windshield, bricks had flown, and some of those arrested were pepper sprayed by police even after they were adequately restrained. Another 50 people were on their knees being arrested in an alley just off Columbia Road as reports continued to come in from reporters in the field well into the early morning hours.

There is a clear sense that the oppressive tactics witnessed in DC, as well as during the RNC in New York and the trade protests in Miami, are increasingly the undeniable traits of an expanding police state. And yet, for all of the chest-thumping about the extensive security in place, protesters managed to carry their messages and their dissent right onto the parade route, through the streets all across the capitol of the Christian crusaders' empire, and make their voices heard around the world.
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by Penny
penelope (at) penelopedesign.com
Thanks for your write-up. There is still very little about the protest actions in mainstream media as far as I can tell. I stood yesterday at 14nth and Pennsylvania, at about 3 PM, with no sign, not shouting, and not approaching the fence, just to express my disagreement with this administration's policies and stand for my right to express my opinion. I looked in the eyes of the riot police ranked three-deep on the other side of the fence. I am 5'4'', 125lbs, was carrying nothing but my cell phone, so not a very threatening figure! They shouted at me to step back, even though I was several feet back from the barrier already. I moved back to the curb, at least ten feet back, where I felt I was within my rights to stand quietly. There was no one else very near me, although people were shouting and approaching the fence farther down on my right. The police were repeatedly shooting them with pepper spray, firing directly into each person's face. I was determined to simply stand there as long as I was able. 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.
This morning I heard a clip from Bush's speech: "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you." What I tried to do yesterday was exactly that: to stand for my liberty. Apparently my liberty is not as valuable when my oppressor is American. Is this the message? Because I disagree with my nation's politics, I lose the right to express my opinion?

by Portland Protester
One must be careful not to give justification for the media and the Government to Demonize protesters that get out of line. The media shapes opinions in the eyes of the public about your actions. Your message will not get through and the mass of people will stop listening because unlawful people break the law. Whenever someone does something unlawful or unruly it gives the State the reason to oppress. Stay within the law and the bounds of morality, if you dont the press and the people in control will have the opportunity to paint you as misfits whose opinion does not matter. Peaceful protest is the answer, consciousness raising, alternative news, thoughtful resistance, networking. Make it a way of life, tell everyone you know. We have another four bad years of Bush to endure, go for the long haul and be smart about it.
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(I would like to add to the above that when the authorities react heavily to 'misfits' and destructive acts, they tend to react upon those who have been peaceful too while they are at it, lashing out at any demonstrator or person within reach, whether peaceful, innocent bystander, or those who ARE acting out more destructively.  One can be  "anarchist" or "anti-authoritarian" creatively, without hardening the heart or resorting to destructiveness.)~~The overwhelming majority of the protestors on Jan.20, '05 WERE peaceful.

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