The Inaugural Invaders

Since then, Seattle-style protests have spilled over into Washington, D.C. (last April, for an International Monetary Fund meeting), then Philadelphia (in July, for the Republican convention), then Los Angeles (in August, for the Democratic convention), with countless smaller protests in between. After a year of watching activists kidnap headlines, many observers are still slightly confused about their demands. The list is endless. They want not only to stop corporate globalization, but to free Mumia, shut down the prison-industrial complex, and unionize Vietnamese blowdart manufacturers. Or something like that.

Today, as we congregate in the crowded, no-frills law offices of the Partnership for Civil Justice in Washington, D.C., journalists are experiencing protest fatigue. We slump on windowsills and sit Indian-style on the floor. One alert cameraman takes a snooze on a lobby couch. We’re here for yet another protester press conference. The activists (who are mobilizing by the thousands) love to hold press conferences before their demonstrations — and sometimes even after. In December, five months after the Philadelphia protests, protesters held a press conference at which they reenacted last summer’s police raids.

At this press conference, they are exercized over the Bushies’ obstructing their access to the inaugural parade route with bleachers. One activist implores the media to “be our guardians, be our watchdogs.” But many of us, forced to stand in the lobby outside the overflowing conference room, can’t even see him. By now, the lawyers have taken over. But the movement still boasts grass-roots types, like Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, who straggles in. Shabazz is surrounded by female New Black Pantherettes in black berets and black coats. Shabazz himself sports a black suit and black tie on a black shirt. In short, the mood is black.

Shabazz has come to promote his Day of Outrage! rally. Though long a local flamethrower fond of anti-Semitic pronouncements, he is clearly tamping down his image. He hands me a business card from his law practice, which wisely drops the “Zulu” moniker, off-putting surely to potential slip-and-fall clients. Shabazz gets a debriefing from another activist, who tells him the rant-of-the-moment is against the local police, who’ve promised tighter security restrictions than for any past inauguration. “All y’all do is talk police,” says Shabazz, displeased. “I don’t want to create an atmosphere of hysteria. It’s not my focus. I’m gonna roll.”

As the Shabazz entourage rolls out the door, the press conference breaks up and I encounter Brian Becker of the International Action Center, founded by former U.S. attorney general and Waco fetishist Ramsey Clark. Radical journalist L. A. Kauffman has identified the IAC as a “front group for the Workers’ World party, a four-decade-old socialist organization with some super-creepy politics” (it supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia). Becker seems perfectly reasonable, saying that his group is protesting the inauguration of Bush the same way it would have protested a Gore inauguration. As matters stand however, the protesters, most of whom seem to be Ralph Nader supporters, think Bush’s election was illegitimate. In other words, the protesters are playing this protest under protest.

January 11 — Cover enough protests and you see some pretty strange breeds. Today’s is the “elephonkey” — half elephant, half donkey. The beast is actually an activist wearing a big furry head depicting the two “corporate parties'” mascots. Pulling the elephonkey’s trunk is Daniel Holstein, a Justice Action Movement organizer (JAM is the umbrella coalition for most inaugural activists). In keeping with the “Inaugurauction” theme, Holstein is supposed to be acting the part of a billionaire corporate fat cat. But in a bad three-piece suit, he looks as if he should be selling used Hyundais.

“I don’t want any of you to listen to these activists,” Holstein says. “They’re not even dressed well. They smell like patchouli.” The media, seated on metal folding chairs in a church basement in Southeast D.C., meet Holstein’s shtick with vacant stares. Most of us would rather be off covering a story with greater heft, like the unveiling of Tian Tian and Mei Xiang, the National Zoo’s two new giant pandas.

The protesters, who represent every grievance group from Homes Not Jails to the Coastal Rainforest Coalition, are again carping about the police “creating a climate of fear.” They may have a point. A television reporter asks if there’s any validity to the chief of police’s charge that some activists intend to throw tomatoes at Bush’s inaugural limo. “I want to address the Washington Police Department’s strange obsession with food as weaponry,” says Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a dour lawyer with the Partnership for Civil Justice. “I ask you to keep in mind that in April when they illegally raided the [activists’] lawful convergence center, they claimed they found the makings of pepper spray, when in fact all they found was the kitchen where they were making gazpacho soup.”

In fairness to the police, I had occasion to witness the activists making gazpacho during the Los Angeles protests (secret ingredient: dirty fingernails). All things being equal, I’d take my chances with the pepper spray.

January 13 — The ever-crowded activists’ calendar presents all sorts of Solomonic choices. Does one stay indoors to attend the “Stop U.S. Aid to Israel!” meeting? Or does one opt for the fresh air of the “Flowers for Tipper” event outside the Naval Observatory, where protesters are encouraged to send “the rightful first lady” a tasteful bouquet?

Today’s choice is easy, as there is only one worthwhile event on the docket: the police brutality teach-in. I take a seat in a balcony pew at Northwest D.C.’s Plymouth Congregational Church. The young activist next to me is eating a pungent legume-like substance out of a plastic baggie. He is so gaunt that I nearly succumb to a fit of compassionate conservatism, seize his Ziplock, and insist on buying him a cheeseburger. But there’s no time. The relatives of deceased victims of police brutality, most of whom seem to be represented in unflattering prom pictures, begin taking the stage. One after another, they tell how their blameless kin were cut down by cold-blooded police. The stories are moving — harrowing — and in some instances probably even true. But they have absolutely nothing to do with Bush’s inauguration. In fact, Bush’s inauguration seems to have very little influence on the activists’ agendas. The IAC’s promotional fliers, for instance, tout every far-afield topic from lesbian-gay-bi-transgender liberation to freedom for Leonard Peltier.

After a break for “networking” and refreshments in the church basement, where protesters scarf rice’n’peas, rice’n’milk, rice’n’etc., we reconvene for a “legal rights for protesters” workshop. As we take our seats in a circle, our facilitator, the sourpuss attorney Mara, singles me out and informs the group that I am an outsider from the media, who will likely be asked to leave before they get into legal share-time. Mara ticks through some preliminary comments, and I hope she’ll forget my presence, but at the appointed moment, she suggests I leave. Since the activists do everything by the “consensus model,” however, she puts this to a vote. My new circle of friends smile at me beatifically. They are perfectly happy for me to stay. At least until Marina, our other (noseringed) facilitator, says if jail solidarity is being discussed, “I would rather him be gone.” Like the cops who have bucked up against these activists in the past, I learn a tough lesson: Solidarity is a pisser. Before a new vote can even be taken, I’m ejected into the refreshments room, to ponder whether the rice tamales are any better than the pepperspray gazpacho.

January 15 — Many people assume the activist life consists of obsessive leafleting, crashing on your friends’ couches, and eating bad Indian takeout. Those people would be right. But there is more to it as well. The activist life is a constant cycle of deployment, education, and organization, I learn at the JAM general meeting at the George Washington University Law Center.

As befits a group that must always stay one step ahead of the police, they post on their website nearly everything they do. Here, one can pick up all sorts of useful protester tips. For instance, only a pro would know the proper aftercare for someone hit with tear gas: “Hydrate! Hydrate! Hydrate! . . . Drink copious amounts of Nettle tea. . . . Support your nervous system with hot oatmeal breakfasts, lavender flower or essential oil and oatmeal baths.”

But day to day plans are hashed out at these general meetings. The activists are suited up in traditional tribal garb: Jesus-Christ-Superstar flared trousers, Josey-Wales ponchos, and enough hemp clothing to ensure that if Bush redoubles the war on drugs and causes a marijuana shortage, they’ll be able to smoke their shirts in perpetuity. Daniel Holstein, the elephonkey trainer/Hyundai salesman, paces the stage like a discount George Patton, loading the activists with more protest logistics than most special forces units could digest. The protesters, it turns out, are such models of efficiency that facilitator Alix cautions us not to waste valuable planning time with outbreaks of applause. Instead, we are to hold our palms aloft and twinkle our fingers silently in the manner known as “jazz hands.”

The activist community is largely self-sustaining, which means a duffel-bag collection plate is passed. The fund-raising spokesperson announces the collection has netted $ 279, bringing on a wind-churning display of jazz hands. As we break into working groups, I am drawn to Sister Comrade Bork, an anarchist who wears swash-buckling boots from her part-time Renaissance festival stints, and a black bandana over her face. Sister Bork is making noise in the legal working group. She and other anarchists are worried that since JAM organizers are planning merely to protest and not to engage in civil disobedience and get themselves thrown in jail, proper worst-case-scenario legal arrangements have not been made.

In the course of the evening, I’ve made a point of engaging Sister Bork in small-talk several times. But now, as I approach her working group, she suddenly flashes me with a “Media is a viable target” placard. I ask why the sudden hostility. “I’m media-friendly under circumstances where I don’t feel great insecurity,” she says. “Do I make you insecure?” I ask, trying to lock on the haunted hazel eyes peeping over her Jesse-James mask. “You look cop-like to me,” she replies. I continue to give her media attention, until other activists start getting jealous. Tom Rainey, the chief propaganda officer of BushOnCrack.com, approaches us and pulls the collar of his “Hail to the Thief” T-shirt over his mouth. “Why are you doing that?” I ask. He says, “So you’ll interview me.”

Nice try Tom, but tonight, I’m with Sister Bork, who, as I get to know her, begins to show her softer side. It’s a hard life, she confides — being called bandits, not being able to make a decision without those damn consensus models, having to wear these pesky masks in solidarity with other anarchists. “It’s uncomfortable in the summer, it’s uncomfortable in the winter,” she says. At this, I’m uncertain, but I almost think she wants me to hold her. Either that, or maybe she just needs an encouraging round of jazz hands.

January 16 — In the activist’s world, a world of change, the only constant is puppets. The protesters’ art space is housed in a decrepit building in Takoma Park, Maryland, that also contains a Chinese laundry. The activists have obscured the windows with wax paper. They’ve adorned the walls with paranoid admonishments: “Keep front door closed and someone posted. . . . Don’t call attention to ourselves. . . . Rock on!!!” All around, the art elves are at work. In the back of the studio, a street theater troupe is stitching caribou outfits for a skit in which Bush, who’ll have an oil well atop his crown, will drive the caribou out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The rest of the shop is strewn with bike-tire rubber, acrylic paint cans, and a puppet pig head which represents corporations or cops or both. (Referring to the police as “pigs,” I learn, is an anachronism and a sure-fire way to rouse suspicion among the protesters that you are an undercover cop. Modern activists, says JAM spokesman Adam Eidinger, have taken simply to calling the police “donuts.”)

I’ve come to the art space this evening with the hope of seeing the giant, jug-eared George W. Bush puppet, but am disappointed to learn that Robert, the Bush puppet’s guardian, could not fit the papier-mache hulk onto the metro while carrying his sewing machine. In this protest, unlike others, the activists have decided to decentralize puppet operations and send puppets home each night in a sort of puppet foster care set-up. This is a result of Philadelphia, which in protester lore is synonymous with Wounded Knee. It was there, right before the anti-death penalty march during last year’s Republican convention, that after a five-hour standoff the police invaded the puppet warehouse (called the Ministry of Puppetganda). “They went in and arrested 62 puppetistas,” says Noah, an 18-year-old puppeteer in a painter’s jumpsuit and jester’s hat. “They were claiming that the papier-mache they were using for puppets was quick drying cement that we were going to use for roadblocks.” As if that weren’t horrifying enough, thuggish donuts then seized and terminated puppets with extreme prejudice. “We lost everything,” says Tonya, a 23-year-old, who, when I ask what she does when she’s not doing this, says, “I’m kind of always doing this.”

As only those who’ve known loss can be, these puppetistas are a soulful bunch. I ask them if this whole puppet business isn’t a tad silly. No, says a visibly wounded Tonya. “They’re very symbolic and very scary. They’re scary because they’re powerful!” Sometimes, however, they’re just plain scary. Witness the giant female pro-choice puppet — who at the moment has blotchy skin and a huge honker — being fashioned by another 23-year-old, Dawn. “I’m just pissed about this whole election,” explains Dawn. “And John Ashcroft himself is a scary, f — in’ thing. I love that I can come and make a puppet that’s just as scary and freaky as that man.”

Dawn isn’t just about scaring people however. She also uses her puppetry to nurture, as when she entertains sick children with hand puppets down at the children’s hospital. It’s very difficult to make a living as a puppeteer, Dawn says. But it’s getting easier. Because of the highly visible, perpetual protests, she says, everybody “wants a piece of the puppet action.” When asked if sock puppets, which have been on the wane since the demise of Shari Lewis and Lambchop, are due for a resurgence, Dawn doesn’t bat an eye. “Hell yes,” she says. “Everybody has socks. Everybody can make puppets.”

Creatively and physically spent, the puppetistas must fortify themselves. Tonya asks if anyone wants to go down the street to a Caribbean place and order “a whole pile of slop for cheap.” “Only if the slop is vegan,” retorts Dawn. The time has come for us to part (I’m not a big fan of vegan slop). But we’ll likely meet again. The inaugural protests will be over in four days. Except that the protests are never really over. Already, protesters are bidding each other adieu with “See you in Quebec,” where in April they will attempt to shut down the meeting of hemispheric leaders planning to launch the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Of course, we may run into each other before then. I ask Noah if he’ll be at the “Flowers for Tipper” event. “Flowers for Tipper? As in the Queen of Censorship?” he asks of the former Parents’ Music Resource Center spokeswoman. Noah will not be attending. Anyone who curtails another’s right to rock on, he reasons, “probably doesn’t like puppets either.”

Matt Labash is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.