The DC Protest: From Misinformation To A Living Deathcount
The above photo is of a 3′ x 3′ charcoal or rubber marking, found about 30 feet from the steps of the Capitol in Washington D.C. It was one of about five in the area, with the rest of the bunch all smaller and no more menacing than this particular marking.
I took the picture around 2pm, as my brother and I participated in and covered the anti-war protest.
Now, a number of conservative blogs — with large threads of clueless readers — are referring to this benign event as protesters vandalize Capitol building! In the posts, there are references of “spray paint” as the protester’s media of choice “to spray their dissent all over the steps of the U.S. Capitol building.”
Take a look at the picture above — it looks like someone busted out a rubber heel of a bar stool and rubbed the mark to fruition.
In any event, for the two hours we spent on the steps of the Capitol, as far as I can report, nothing worthwhile regarding violence or destruction occurred. At least nothing to dent the taxpayer’s wallet.
I can report, however, that there were some awkward, interesting, funny and stunning expressions of free speech just a few feet away from the steps of the Capitol:
The Soldier’s Wife
Man, this scene was rough.
This poor girl — she looked no older than 19 — just stood in place for an hour while completely releasing her frustrations regarding her husband’s deployment to Iraq.
It was great to see the wife of a soldier at the steps of the Capitol, releasing her pent up anger and frustrations, but man… I actually felt for the fuzz. When she finally left, after an hour of non-stop venting, the cops sort of looked at one another, took a deep breath, and stood at attention once again.
It’s too bad she can’t get 5 minutes on the floor of Congress — speaking directly to the people who can actually put an end to this madness — instead of spending an hour shouting into the wind directly outside.
To The Capitol! (Where’s The Capitol, Dude)
While the soldier’s wife vented, a huge group of punk rock kids walked over the grassy knoll to the right of the steps, chanting different things at different times — though I have to say the funniest was, “To the Capitol! To the Capitol! (followed by the guy in the lead with “Dude, where’s the Capitol?)”
We were standing right in front of it.
Various members of the group attempted to look menacing, but it was obvious that they were a bunch of students — a remnant of the 60’s radical organization, the SDS — who seemed to be looking for something to do on the fly.
They might have been the party guilty of tagging the pavement earlier in the afternoon (again, I don’t know for sure, but it seemed to fit their vibe), but by no means were they violent or radical.
The above picture isn’t showing a guy with a bullhorn working a crowd into a fist-raising frenzy; the leader of the pack simply asked the kids to raise fists if they wanted to join the “normal protesters in the march” or, and I quote, “just go do other stuff.”
They decided to join the marchers.
Dance, Dance, Revolution
This girl had me cracking up.
As the SDS broke off to meet up with the “normal” protesters, she moved directly in front of the officers guarding the steps and before you could say, “Michael Jackson,” she had already started to bust a move.
That was funny by itself — the bandanna covered revolutionist dancing her ass off — but as she continued to gyrate, she started a one-way conversation with the officers in front of her:
Come on, dance! Dance! It’s good for you! Dance! I see you smiling, come on, why can’t you dance?!…
That went on for at least 20 minutes. Somewhere in the midst of her bopping and prodding, someone screamed, “Dance! Dance! Revolution!” and as if on cue, she emulated the dance moves on the floor interface of the arcade game with the same name.
Too damn funny.
Tri-be: Performance Art
Identical triplets from tri-be performed all around Washington D.C. Each square inch of red cloth represented a specific number of casualties in the War on Terror.
- The businesswoman represents the victims of 9/11
- The soldier represents the fallen US service men and women
- The Muslim woman represents the fallen Iraqis and Afghani’s
From the silent execution of the performance to the details of the wardrobe to the absolutely compelling subtext of identical triplets as the participants, I was moved to my core.
Check out tri-be for yourself.
So Did The Protest Make The Slightest Dent In Policy?
I’m not sure if anti-war protests these days have the same teeth that they did back in the 60’s and 70’s. Quite honestly, law enforcement on the scene seemed pretty laid back, almost as if they were babysitting for the afternoon.
I’m not advocating chaos or violence as a vehicle for change, either.
On this day, the crowd was already diversified via organizational groups and each seemed to be focused more than a few degrees away from the next — one would be for the impeachment of Bush, the next for the liberation of Palestine, etc. Without a focused and consistent message — and a organized, regimented march — the message itself became diluted. So instead of delivering a powerful message through the action of tens of thousands of coordinated Americans, protesters, as a whole, opened themselves up to be reduced to “anarchists” and pegged as “anti-American.”
But there is a flip-side to such a perspective.
The internet in 2007 allows like-minded people to not only connect with one another, but to extend discourse beyond letters, meetings and protests — as anti-war activists were limited to 40 years ago.
These permanent hooks of discourse now live in the ether of the web, ripe for furthering conversations and introducing new realities to millions of Americans and global citizens each day.
Four years into the Iraq war, the representative arm of our government has heard the voice of the American public loud and clear and is beginning to at least challenge the administration’s policy. How long, and how many protests, did it take for a similar foothold to take place in the anti-Vietnam war era?
Much more than four years and a protest counter-culture needed to become established.
For numerous reasons, modern day American anti-war protests are an immature brand of past struggles — no centralized and respected leadership; no coordinated approach to physical movement; no single, simple message to sell to the other side — but the unpaved, decentralized streets of the internet just might be the flip to the script that makes the difference in the long-run.
For all our sakes, let’s hope that’s the case.
Tags: activism, America, Andy Coon, antiwar, change, Congress, free speech, funny, graffiti, internet, Iraq War, j27, misinformation, police, protest, SDS, Washington DC, World 2.0.
33 Responses to “The DC Protest: From Misinformation To A Living Deathcount”
- 1 Pingback on Jan 29th, 2007 at 7:55 am
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Can I use “I Felt For The Fuzz” as the title of my first album? I’m probably going to drop out of society and get a band together.
Crap. Taken. Might as well stay in society until the boys get out of college now.
I like “rubbed the mark to fruition,” or maybe just “rubbed to fruition,” as an album title.
Enjoyed the post, Sean.
thanks, percy. now where do i send my expense receipts?
Great post Sean, Working on mine.
great photos…it looks like you really got up close to at the capital.
I wasnt at the protests this weekend (I tried to avoid the metro at all costs on Saturday), but a few weeks ago I came across this protest that has a related video on you tube. Apparently its actually going to be used for a documentary covering the US after 9/11 that will air on PBS.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vxyu5fjCKzg
Can we agree on, “The smash hit single, “Rubbed To Fruition” by “I Felt The Fuzz (featuring L’il Coon).”
Agreed, Mr. Sun. I’d also take Sean’s “These Permanent Hooks of Discourse” as a band name over “The Soundtrack of Our Lives” any day of the week.
Sean, feel free to ban us.
Wait … before you ban us, I’ve got an early draft:
Girl, please don’t cut and run
Your love’s my only mission
Babe, I know I surged too soon
When you rubbed me to fruition
Percy, let’s hang out here permanently.
ha! that’s choice… but now i feel the need to drop a verse:
percy? lil’coon?
Wait! Second verse:
You say our love’s a quagmire
You shout it ’til your hoarse
I will not let my heart rest
On your hooks of dirty discourse
i smell a follow up post in the works… percy, are you going to make us copyright our jam or can it be released under a CC license?
I have to go now, but I am thinking Ohio Players-style for the cover art.
CC license is OK, but we need to be clear that I don’t approve of activism unless its the hedge fund kind.
sun, get me a larger version and we’re on the road to stardom! percy, what’s our operating budget for this project? i’m thinking if done right, we can draw at least a handful of semi-motivated executives to downtown greensboro.
in no time flat we’ll have filled up the wachovia building… lobby.
I think this is how we should look. I do all the talking for us, and I’ll probably want to go solo real soon.
as the tallest band member (6′6″ with the afro), i reserve the right to blackmail you into staying on with a sex tape i found in your bus locker.’
fuzzmaster flash is a flexible fellow, eh?
Gentlemen, if you could please go by my stage name Lay-Z… I’m always in retirement.
Great pics and great stories, Sean.
thanks, chris
Great Post!
darnit…grin
Sean Coon, just wanted to thank you for the pictures you posted on Flikr of the performance I did with my sisters in D.C. Beautiful photographs, you must be the person that said “stunning” out loud. Thank you.
Looney ass college-washed lefty. Your cos profs must be proud, out doing their bidding!
Ahh, comment moderation. Some free-speech advocate you are!
it’s common across all blogs to have a comment from a new IP address drop into moderation.
do you actually think you said something that needed to be censured?
*quote*
protesters, as a whole, opened themselves up to be reduced to “anarchists” and pegged as “anti-American.”
*/quote*
“reduced” to anarchists? I’m hurt… frankly, having spent a whole hell of a lot of time in lefty politics over the years, I’ve found that more often then not the Anarchists are the most informed and best read folks in the scene. To start with, they’re far more likely to have seriously considered multiple points of view and - because very few of them were raised as anarchists and virtually all started out as something else - they’ve almost all gone through a long process of reading, researching, and exploring different ideas and ideologies and settled on Anarchism as the most practical way to organize a society that both creates economic equality and respects and preserves individual liberty.
They are, in other words, far more likely to actually know what they’re talking about then most liberals. And you’re worried about being “reduced to anarchists”? you’d do much better to aspire to be like them.
i don’t aspire to become any label or generalization.