10:15 a.m.-Bethesda

We parked in the lot next to Olssen's Bookstore on Old Georgetown Road. It felt strange to get out of the car in middle of Bethesda with a large, somewhat unwieldy (it eventually came to seem wieldy) sign reading ILLEGITIMATE: WE WILL NEVER FORGET. We walked across the street to the Metro with our signs-glancing about with uncertainty and nervous excitement.

10:30 a.m.-Bethesda Metro

Immediate hyper-consciousness of the possible political affiliation of anyone and everyone nearby; searching facial expressions for signs of agreement/hostility-especially the tourists buying Metrocards. Tourists on this day seemed more likely to be inaugural celebrators. Celebrators = enemy.

11:00 a.m.-Dupont Circle

The escalator carried us up into a veritably frothing sea of good-will and fellow-feeling; bustling, sign-wielding crowds; folks of all ages in the spirit of it all. People immediately noticed, laughed at, and complimented Ben's sign-OUR CHILDREN IS SCREWED (see later, post-protest reactions from Republican spectators). This quashed any remaining uncertainty I had about the humorous quality of this sign and Hillary's sign: 2 ILLEGIT NOT 2 QUIT. (The latter is an occasional parody of MC Hammer's 1989 mega-hit, "2 Legit 2 Quit." This sign somehow got lost or abandoned in the mix.)

Like some kind of political singles club, everyone seemed to be "checking out" everyone else's sign and repeating aloud the various slogans. These ranged in quality from the strong-THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN (ALL 5 OF THEM)-to the rather weak-WE'RE BUSHED-to the somewhat predictably double entendred-KEEP YOUR BUSH OUT OF MY BUSH and the somewhat confusing HEY LAURA, MY BUSH IS BETTER THAN YOUR BUSH. One of the better-designed signs of the day featured a graphic of a pig with the head of John Ashcroft and read ASHCROFT IS A RACIST, SEXIST PIG.

Near the fountain I ran into Laura Tannenbaum, a woman I teach with. She's very active in union stuff at NYU.

Then there was the "Naked Cowboy." The "Naked Cowboy" was not in fact naked-he wore a tight white Speedo, had long blonde hair and a suspiciously deep suntan, and walked around playing the guitar. His song went something like "I'm the Naked Cowboy/ And I'm comin' to your town." For a couple minutes everyone watched the "Naked Cowboy" sing his song. The someone-Dan?-said, "I think he's taking advantage of the crowd."

It was true. This wasn't an appropriate time for zany antics: we were here to protest the illegitimacy of the President-elect.

An enormous crowd was assembled around a stage we couldn't see. Through the PA system, what sounded like an extremely old woman was incanting things. Based on what I'd read in the paper, I supposed this was Granny D, the extremely old woman famous for walking across the United States for campaign finance reform.

It appeared that our signs were clearly among the better signs in the crowd-made from sturdy, water-resistant foam-core as opposed to flimsy cardboard; mounted on strong yet light wooden sticks (actually, Ben and Hillary neglected to use sticks, and their arms eventually grew tired from holding their signs up. My advice to protesters is: a good, lightweight stick = visibility + comfort) and well-printed in bright, easy-to-read, red-black-and-blue colors.

I realized for first time the value of painting one's slogan on both sides of one's sign, which I'd failed to do. But I would occasionally flip the sign 180 so that the people standing behind me could see it.

11:30 a.m.-Dupont Circle

For a little while there was some confusion as to what we were going to do. How were the different organizations-International Action Center, Justice Action Movement, NOW, Gore Majority (the more "moderate" group I had supposed I'd join up with)-how were they all going to split off and march to their respective protest sites?

Luckily this was soon clarified. It was announced that everyone would march en masse down P street, and immediately we all started flowing out of the park.

The march was amazing. Maybe the best part. There was complete solidarity, and every bystander along the route gave us a thumbs-up or a supportive cheer. Chants began toward the front of the march and filtered, somewhat syncopatedly, toward the rear: "Gore Got More!", "Count Every Vote!" (which, truth be told, seemed kind of sad or even morbid), and Gabe's personal favorite, the popular call-and-response chant "What Do We Want? Democracy! When Do We Want It? Now!"

You just have to get used to chanting. In a march setting, your voice is oddly distinct and not at all drowned out in the crowd, so you have to get comfortable with feeling like you're just shouting into the air. Then there's the habit of pausing, after a few rounds of the chant, to make sure others are still loudly chanting (it's also necessary if you've somehow lost the rhythm). The problem with this is that your silence for that round (especially if your voice is loud and distinctive) may encourage others nearby to stop chanting, which can contribute to the petering-out of the chant. In retrospect, it's probably better just to chant until there's obviously no one else chanting. You feel silly for a moment, but that's just part of the process. There are really a lot of (healthy) issues about the relation between individual and group that surface during a march (most of which I won't have time to address here); it's possible to use the chanting-time to ponder these.

Interestingly, Gabe would start up his chant by giving both the call and the response: "What do we want? Democracy!…." and so forth, till others joined in.

"It's a really good chant," he was heard to remark.

It was a whole mix of people-people marching with strollers, little kids, middle-aged people, older people, "young" people (us), the occasional crazy-looking radical refugee from the 60s. But generally, the crowd really seemed to draw energy from itself in a very positive and sustenant way-which, if you think about it, is pretty wonderful considering that the crowd consists of people so furious about the Republican Party's gross and illegal and arrogant and shameless and absolutely mind-bogglingly unjust usurpation of power that frequently they feel as though their throats will constrict in an apoplectic rage, forcing them to claw their own eyeballs out of their sockets and then bay like insane, mute hell-hounds at the damned and forsaken universe.

11:50 a.m.-Something & K Street.

The march was halted by a police barricade. Mounting confusion and impatience; a scraggly-looking guy of seemingly questionable reliability reporting word of something going on in the intersection up ahead: police…tear-gas…anarchists…"You can help them…go through!" I think it later turned out that he was referring to the incident with the bloody-faced kid who was hit in the head with a police "radio" and being treated by medics and so forth. In any case, there were Navy helicopters flying overhead, and a general atmosphere of ominousness, foreboding, and confrontation. One girl shouted "Fuck Gore too," and I internally chided her for sowing potential dissent in the crowd.

We chanted "Who's Streets? Our Streets!" etc., which seemed like a very appropriate chant considering our surreal position of being barricaded by police many blocks from the parade route-and we could clearly see people walking about freely just on the other side of K Street.
I ran into my friend Marty, who'd flown in from Pasadena.

Eventually we decided to turn around and seek out an alternate route past K Street; but the alleys through which people had moments before been "escaping" were now also blocked off by police.
So we made a complete 180 and started back the way we'd come.

But that way was also blocked off by police. For one or two extremely surreal minutes we were completely boxed in, as if we were about to be exterminated or something, until a woman in front of us asked, "Are you arresting us? If so, you need to read us our rights," and so forth.

Maybe that struck a chord, because the police in front of us grudgingly parted, conceding "Okay, go, then," as if we'd been nagging or badgering them like impatient children.

It became obvious that the march was scattering in different directions, which must have been the point of the blockade at K Street: to worry and then splinter the large and cohesive group. We followed one strain which seemed to know where they were going. At one point some people started jogging or running by, warning us that hordes of police were at that moment boarding buses to come head us off again. Indeed, there were some police buses nearby; but really, if buses full of police actually had it in mind to come after us, was jogging a little faster really going to help? We thought not. And kept walking briskly.

12:15 p.m.-Freedom Plaza

Arrival at Freedom Plaza was somewhat like reaching an oasis or a Promised Land of sorts. The stream of people we had followed from K Street had been only a small tributary flowing into this extraordinary mass of exuberant protesters. In addition to the general crowd of ordinary sign-wielding citizens, there were hippie kids banging out rhythms on bongo drums and plastic barrels, leaping and dancing around; the now-famous contingent wearing oversized papier-mâché caribou heads; anarchists clad in all manner of militant garb. All these folks were mingling in a congested area in front of a metal gate. Beyond the gate, off in the distance, we could see Pennsylvania Avenue and the parade bleachers adjacent to the Plaza. In fact, from where we stood, the parade bleachers seemed to be speckled with signs and banners-and indeed, as we would later find out, the bleachers had been claimed by the protesters, who were said to have overwhelmed a small "guard" of Girl Scouts clad in raingear and, to the appalled gasps of members of the Inaugural Committee, appropriated the area.
We assumed, based on the large crowd pressing up against the gate, that this was as close as we were going to get to the parade route. But after a few minutes it became clear that this backed-up crowd was funneling toward an opening in the gate-and lo and behold, it was a check-point, and everyone was slowly but surely being let through into the main area of the Plaza. After having been blockaded at several different points as far back as K Street, it felt downright lucky to suddenly gain immediate access to the actual parade route. As we passed through, unfrisked and largely unimpeded, a guy on a megaphone repeated over and over: "You will be subject to a full body cavity search…please unbuckle your pants…."

Gabe unfortunately traipsed through a scattered pile of horseshit, and several of us cried "Security! He's stepping on the President! He's assaulting the President!"

As we wandered over in the direction of the bleachers, it became clear that we'd probably been separated from the Gore Majority crowd. What had started off as "Gore Got More" and "Count Every Vote" had now shifted towards "Free Mumia" and "Free Palestine" signs and various strident references to a "police state." In one section, members the new Black Panther Party were listening to a revolutionary speech, presenting the Party's new incarnation as a serious and legitimate political force. In another section, a charismatic speaker with full microphone and amp exhorted the veterans of the IMF and WTO protests to continue the democratic struggle.

Although this kind of overtly "radical" symbolism seemed a bit off-putting at first, it soon became clear that the vast majority of those present had come for a single, unified purpose: to demonstrate to Bush and to everyone watching that, as one sign put it, "You Are Not My President." We worked our way up toward the rope dividing the crowd from Pennsylvania Avenue, until we were virtually one row of people from the front. There we settled in for what would be a very long and very cold wait for the Parade to come through.

12:30 p.m. till well after 3:00-Freedom Plaza

In retrospect, the ongoing sound of the drums in the background was key. It kept everyone's feet tapping and provided a kind of comforting and sustaining rhythm. It also provided a metre for the various chants, giving them an infectious musical quality. The most popular rhythm-chants-the ones which only grew in frequency and enthusiasm as time went on-were: "Bush, Cheney Go Away/ Racist, Sexist, Anti-Gay" and the incredibly catchy "One: We Are the People/ Two: A Little Bit Louder/ Three: We Want Bush Out of D.C." The rhythm was such that each of the last six syllables (Want- Bush-Out-of-D.-C.) was given a full stressed beat. Honestly, there is nothing like a perfectly-metred utterance to make a tingle go down your spine. I would go so far as to say that it was during those six beats that crowd was most completely unified-one loud voice asserting one unambiguously meant and felt purpose, in perfect timing.

Moments of comic relief also helped in enduring the freezing wetness. Gabe made several attempts to rekindle the "What Do We Want? Democracy!" chant, not all of which were successful. Sometimes he'd cry out "What Do We Want?" and then not immediately hearing the response (as before) give it himself: "Democracy! When Do We Want It?…" It was hard to get the timing down in those instances.
Then there were the occasional conspicuous Republicans who, for reasons I still can't fathom, pressed their way through our crowd, trying to get to the bleachers or god knows where. One group-two women in fur hats and a man in an overcoat-who seemed to have been giving interviews to a reporter in the media-and-police area in front of the rope, suddenly plunged into our midst, inciting cries of "Pigs! We've got pigs here!" to which the man replied, "Go easy." Go easy? God, that was so Republican. They're so lame. And they obviously had no idea where they were.

Even better was an old, extremely grouchy and clearly disoriented man who, with his heavily-made-up wife, aggressively shoved his way through us, sputtering something about his tickets, which he clenched angrily in his fist. When someone next to us objected "You can't just push people," he growled "Fuck off…my tickets… grandstand…we're going to the grandstand…fuck off!" That guy was awesome.

People were checking their watches and passing on vague rumors as to when to the Parade would start. A hatless and hoodless blond-haired kid was standing directly in front of me, and I tried to estimate how long we'd been standing in the rain by keeping track of how wet his hair got. But amazingly, the hair never seemed to get waterlogged or flattened despite the fact that we seemed to have been standing for hours in this drizzle. Every once in a while I'd check the hair, and there was the same delicate coating of water beads. Perhaps this meant that it wasn't really rain, but merely a kind of very heavy mist? No. It was rain. Obviously rain. There was just something weird with the hair.

Through the large windows of the Romanesque building across the street you could see employees of some sort congregating to watch the parade. At first I aimed some contempt at them, mainly because I associated their privileged vantage point with possible pro-Bush sentiment; but then I changed my opinion, deciding that because the D.C. City Council and Mayoral viewing platform was annexed to the same building, they might be city employees of some kind who resented Bush's occupation as much as we did.

Still, attached to the City Council platform was a small stage upon which some type of bell-ringing ensemble seemed to be performing. From where we stood, the bells could not be heard.

Little white pellets of hail began to fall, and my first instinct was: "Hail To the Thief!" A chant started and spread. That might have been my proudest and wittiest moment. Also, it got mentioned in the next day's Washington Post.

We'd been waiting for so long that when the first vanguard of the parade began to whisk by-police motorcycles and VIP coaches mainly-the crowd went absolutely nuts. We exploded in shouts and jeers. Never have you seen 700 damp, gloved fists raised in the air, all giving the finger in the direction of a tour bus with tinted windows. Often you could see a figure or two inside the windows, peering out at us. One wondered whether those figures understood that they, personally, were being strenuously railed at by thousands of people. What were they feeling? Smug condescension? Mortified confusion? Genuine terror? Simple boredom? Once or twice I saw a man inside a bus or SUV make an effete kind of shooing motion with his hand/wrist; and although I was puzzled as to why it would occur to someone to make this gesture, I supposed it indicated a "brushing off" or dismissal of our crowd in an affectedly "unruffled" sort of manner. As the cops, buses and SUVs kept rolling through, the drums and shouting and chanting and rhythmic toe-jouncing mounted in fervor.

By that point-mainly due to the gaps caused by the occasional person pushing his/her way through the crowd-I had drifted up to the very front, right up against the rope. I had the largest sign around, and it was very clear to me that Bush, if and when he bothered to glance in our direction-and if in that moment some spasm of dyslexic misperception didn't render him temporarily illiterate-he could not fail to see and read my sign: ILLEGITIMATE in big red letters, WE WILL NEVER FORGET in red and blue.

Finally the big guns approached-a motorcade with the big car in the middle bedecked with flags, and secret service not merely jogging but running alongside, and the car didn't slow down, and its windows were tinted and rolled up, and for several moments I was screaming at the top of my lungs, holding aloft my sign in one hand and giving the finger with the other, and then the motorcade was past, and that had apparently, we assumed, been Bush.

Another motorcade followed, and this time the interior of the central car was lit up, and you could clearly see Cheney's bald pale head. Screaming, sign, finger.

And then that was that.

We waited for more stuff to come by. There was some discussion as to whether Bush's car had actually come by yet. As this speculation was occurring, I glanced down and saw a naked breast. A woman in front of me was bearing herself to a female reporter, who was taking notes in red crayon on a waterlogged pad. Then the woman covered herself and left. That evening I read in the Post that there had been a woman with an anti-Bush slogan printed across her bare breasts. It must have been this woman. Alas, I never got to see the slogan-nor did anyone standing behind her-and Post declined to repeat it.

Others started to leave.

There were a few moments of near-panic when it seemed that maybe Bush had sent a decoy car, and they were waiting for all the protesters to mistakenly exit before the real Bush car approached. After all, there had been no floats, only a few sad-looking military marching bands, and then a series of black cars speeding past in the rain. But no: it was actually over. It was time, at long last, to really leave.

4:00 p.m.-Outside the Barnes & Noble on 14th Street.

We went in the Barnes & Noble to warm up. Most of the crowd in there seemed to be either innocent shoppers or else people who'd come from the protests. Many signs had been discarded in the entryway, but I wasn't ready to put mine down yet. We were basically back to the glancing-around-furtively-to-see-who's-on-your-side mode. I got mostly approving glances, but one preppy kid dressed in a long navy-blue overcoat muttered under his breath as he passed by: "I'm so glad Clinton's out of office." First I wanted to go after him and explain that the very smug, muttering-under-the-breath manner in which he had uttered his oblique insult revealed the inferiority of both his character in particular and the character of people who thought like him in general. Then I wanted to go after him, kick him in the balls, and bash his blond head against a shelf of cookbooks or Monarch Notes. But, alas, I stood and thawed my hands and feet.

We hung out for a while on the corner outside the store. That was when we noticed something interesting. Off in the distance, in a little segment of street, we could see floats rolling by and hear cheerful parade music. There were viewing stands and bunting and balloons and so forth. In fact, we could just make out that that segment of street looked carpeted. Indeed, it was the place where the parade turned north off Pennsylvania toward the White House; the area where all the enthusiastic paid supporters were congegrated; where, we later heard, the "first" couple had actually gotten out of the car and walked for a bit; and the area that, not surprisingly, most of the networks showed in their coverage of the inauguration.

No wonder it had seemed, from where we stood at Freedom Plaza, like no parade came by. This was where the parade was coming by.

But now the parade was ending, and Republicans from the special viewing areas were starting to leave and stroll down toward the corner of 14th where we were standing.

Based upon their seeming shock and confusion at seeing us poised on the sidewalk holding anti-Bush signs, it became clear that these people had no idea that at Freedom Plaza, right around the corner from their viewing area, a massive demonstration had just minutes before been staged. Could they not have heard the screaming and chanting? They really didn't know what to make of us.

I can't say enough about how funny these Republicans are. They are living, walking stereotypes of themselves-all fur and way too much makeup and red faces and silver hair and occasionally a ten-gallon- hatted veteran of the Black-Tie & Boots Ball. And with their primly trussed-up children in tow. But what really made me understand the cognitive level at which these people operate was their repeated reactions to Ben's OUR CHILDREN IS SCREWED sign. They just didn't get it. Really. It wasn't like they were playing-down or dismissing the Duhbya-mocking reference-they just truly didn't get the joke. "Well, that's real nice use of grammar," they'd jibe as they passed by. "Nice grammar, idiot." Smug snickers. Ben made brief, desperate efforts to help them see their mistake. For instance, after someone sneered "Nice grammar, idiot," Ben would say, "Just like your man Bush!" Maybe they got it then and maybe they didn't. But as increasing numbers of Bush people came by, the confusion only worsened. One man said to the group he was with: "I bet they're not even Americans."

I urged and insisted that we resist what at that point I was calling "the explanatory urge." "Just think," I said, "how much more stupid they'll feel when they go home tonight and realize on their own, retrospectively, how foolish they had been at the time. It will be too late to do anything about it. That's real power."

But to no avail. Finally Gabe's patience broke. He couldn't resist. Bursting onto the sidewalk he frantically cried, "Don't you get it? Your president, George W. Bush, has a widely known tendency to make verbal malapropisms in public statements. Specifically, he confuses the singular and plural forms of passive verbs. This sign"-wildly gesticulating at Ben's sign-"is making fun of that tendency."
Meanwhile, a girl dressed in fatigue pants and a rastafarian-type hat was personally accosting women in fur coats. "I bet it feels good to wear that fur," she said to their faces, following them for a few yards. "Get a job," they retorted. That was kind of embarrassing for all of us.

In the distance, a float depicting an oil rig-an oil rig-rolled by. We decided it was time to go home.

6:00 p.m.-Bethesda

I carried my sign even into the Rio Grande restaurant, legendary for its delicious Tex-Mex, and propped it against the table. We glanced around for the chair painted red-white-and-blue, that George H. W. Bush was known to have sat in, but didn't see it.

Nourished with frozen margaritas, fajitas and enchiladas, we gradually coasted down from the often sublime waves of feeling that day-the solidarity, the marching and chanting and shouting, the exhilarating communal anger and scorn and defiant humor, the thrill of participating in a massive spectacle of righteous indignation and moral resistance. The protests really did accomplish something, despite their being shamelessly spun away by the mainstream press. And yet, beneath it all-and independent of the Tex-Mex-was a gnawing, lonely, dyspeptic feeling, a persistent dull grinding in the brain, because Duhbya had been sworn in as the president.

Brian Booker (electronic mail, February 3, 2001)