DAWN - the washington dc anti war network protest of the george w. bush inauguration ceremony (1.20.2005). my brother kevin was there as a participant and observer. i respect him, his rugby housemates (karl, kelsey, & brian), as well as amy a great deal for taking a last minute all night buss trip from ann arbor michigan to washington dc to protest an unjust war and stand up for their freedoms as citizens of the united states of america (and more importantly this world).
these photos and writings share experiences that represent much more than our own personal beliefs on these issues. they capture a spirit of progressive activism as well as the deep seated division within our own diverse nation.
from
ideashift
to be very clear: neither my brother nor i agree with burning the american flag or many other acts that he was witness to during the protests and marches in washington dc. we love and respect our country dearly. if we did not - he would not have bothered to go and i would not have bothered spending a bunch of time pulling this post together.
this is kevin's story and these are his photos:
It’s Wednesday afternoon, 4pm, and I’m on my way to class. Just passing by Angle Hall I see Karl coming down the street. He stops me, a huge smile on his face, and asks "Want to go to D.C. to protest the inauguration in two hours?". Naturally, I say, "yes", but I didn’t think he was serious. It turns out, he was.
Karl went on to tell me someone just stopped him and said there was a bus leaving for Washington at 6pm. He pleaded with me to come, but I told him I had to go to film class. I kept thinking about it the whole rest of the walk, and when I finally did get to my screening I had made up my mind. I told my teacher there was a bus to D.C. leaving soon and I was going to have skip out. Turns out he wasn’t much of a Bush fan so he didn’t seem to have a problem. I flew home, packed my stuff and next thing I know I’m in front of the Union with Karl, Kelsey, Squad (Brian), and our neighbor Amy. As it turns out, it wasn’t just one bus going either. MSA had sponsored a non-partisan student group to send three busses down for the inauguration. When we got there though, we found out they had canceled one bus due to the number of students who had not paid. They thought they would only need two. What they hadn’t counted on was the twenty-five kids who had just heard about this trip a few hours ago that also wanted to go. They told us there was nothing they could do. They filled their empty seats and that was that. My group wasn’t willing to break up and we waited around with another group hoping for good news. Finally, after about an hour of waiting with no hope of getting on the MSA busses, one of the other “stand-by” passengers named Orin got a hold of a guy named Paul who was organizing another group of busses specifically for protestors under an organization called Students for Progress. He convinced Paul to have the busses swing by the union and pick the last of us up. To say the least, we were lucky.
The whole bus ride down we received information about the different events. I had never been to D.C. and here I am with maps to rally’s and whatnot. At this point there was no turning back. Ahead of us was a twelve-hour all night bus ride.
In the morning, we pulled into a parking lot outside of the Pentagon for some reason. From there we were directed to the closest Metro stop and boarded a train form the Armory station into the middle of the city.
We walked about two miles and eventually made our way to Malcolm X park where a couple thousand people had already gathered to make signs and listen to speakers. Of course none of this had any media coverage for some reason. We hung out there for about an hour; Kelsey played the bongos with a traveling drum group and we wandered here and there checking out the cardboard coffins that had been lined up for the march.
The march itself was amazing. When we finally left the park, Karl and I grabbed one of the black flag coffins which symbolized Iraqi casualties. Squad and Kelsey did the same and were a little ahead of Karl and me. We marched all the way into the center of the city; about two miles. To say the sight was impressive would be an understatement. We were almost at the front of the line and behind us stretched a street literally packed with people as far as the eye could see. Everyone joined in on a variety of chants and protests and brandished numerous signs. Here are a few from both sides:
- Viva Bush
- War Begins with W
- We the People Say No to the Bush Agenda
- Jesus Christ Is Not the God of War
- Four More Years
- Bush Hates America
- The Search for WMD is Not a Faith-Based Initiative
- What About the 98,000 Iraqi Civilian Deaths?
- Evil Rules in the Land of Fools
- Represent, My Ass
- Over a Hundred Thousand Dead in Iraq, and Bush Says He's Pro-Life
- Stop The War
- old Somebody Accountable
- Tell the Truth
- Bring the Troops Home Now
- Worst President Ever
- Shame
- God Bless the Red (painted over the map of the U.S.)
- Free Elections in Iraq, Thanks to Bush
- Draft the Twins (the `w' in Twins was circled and crossed out)
- No More Dead Soldiers
- A War is No Moral Value
- God is Pissed
- Bush 2004 (campaign sign)
- Impeach Bush
Here are my photos from the march:
Karl was interviewed a few times during the march. There was something about that mow-hawk that really catches reporter’s eyes.
When the march reached the middle of D.C., we placed all the coffins down into alternating rows. For starters, it was a very powerful image. Also, it was a deterrent to keep the police from marching in and kicking us out of the park. If they wanted to roll in there they were going to have to tread right over the American flag and I can just see that on the cover of Newsweek. There was another celebration in the park for about an hour. The traveling drum squad was there too so we just hung out and relaxed. Some people, Squad being one of those, decided to do a sit in with the coffins to make sure the cops didn’t push in and they didn’t Overall the DAWN rally ended up being true to its cause, a peaceful anti-war demonstration. That’s what the protestors came for and that’s what it ended up being. When it was over, everyone slowly but surely made their way to other areas.
What upsets me is that so far the only main stream media coverage I've seen of this peaceful anti-war protest mentions none of this. The actions of a few people later in the day, which we witnessed, got tied in with the “coverage” of the protest and ended up giving many who watched the wrong impression about what went on.
The mini-riot that broke out, which was reported by almost every major news organization as "the protest", happened because people were on their way to another protest.The plan for the day was that everyone would proceed from the DAWN rally to the “turn your back on bush” protest (which obviously is where everyone turns their back when the Presidential motorcade comes by during the parade).
The thing was, that to get into the parade route people had to get patted down and go through a ridiculous amount of fake security. The lines were enough to make someone give up on seeing the parade, not to mention the seats along the route were all reserved. Also, no backpacks or even purses were allowed passed security, so anyone who didn’t plan ahead was out of luck.
This left hundreds of disappointed people outside the security gates just milling around, either unable or unwilling to get passed "homeland security". Squad, Kelsey, and I climbed up on top of a bus stop to get the best vantage point and just relaxed for a while as we watched a huge crowd gather. Amy and Karl stayed on the ground because of Karl’s bum leg.
There was a large group of people at the protest under the unified title of “Anarchists” who really got tensions running high. I had met many of them earlier in the day and most of them were really cool, but there were a few who were just looking to start some trouble.
Near the gate, a few people were able to fully unhinge a section of fence and tried to push through. Like cattle everyone poured towards that open section of gate and the police responded very quickly. A couple people started throwing snowballs at the fences and police. Snowballs lead to sticks; sticks lead to uprooted bushes. The police used their riot clubs to fight back the crowd, breaking one kids hand who ended up being pulled back to the bus stop I was on to receive medical attention.
On a side note, the only “medics” I saw the whole time were some of the protestors who came for the sole intention of playing doctor all day to those in need and everyone greatly appreciated their help. They spent the rest of their day flushing people’s eyes and tending to minor injuries. The entire time I was down there though I never saw an actual licensed medic, it says a lot about the state of our health care that they didn’t bother showing up.
The police strapped and secured the gate back up just to have it torn down again and again in one place or another. This was true, but the pepper-spray guns were unleashed right after the first gate went down. Many of the non-violent protestors rushed to the gates to form their own human wall and passively resist the use of pepper spray and crowd control tactics, but behind them many other protestors continued to throw things which resulted in the protestors up front being sprayed at point blank range over and over again. This was about the time I moved down into the crowd. Karl and Kelsey were already down there the whole time but Squad and I had been taking pictures form our vantage point until then.
Down by the fences, Kelsey took a good blast from the pepper spray guns right to the face for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He laughed it off with us and just kind of took it. He made a few jokes to an officer named Gomez about it not feeling that bad. Up to that point we had been trying to keep spirits light and not take everything so serious. Karl had fashioned a “Show us Boobs” sign which we were flashing at the members of a hotel party who
were watching (and laughing) through their windows as protestors got sprayed and beat.
Many a middle finger was thrown in their general direction.
We remained down in the thick of things for a while taking pictures. My camera ran out of batteries about the time people started burning flags in protest.
Oddly enough, I had taken a picture of three people who were burning a flag in front of the fence. In the shot there is a photographer walking through the frame. About twenty seconds later the police unleashed another wave of pepper spray on these kids.
Another side note, pepper spray guns work more like tear gas because it aerosols and everyone ends up breathing it in. I lost my voice just from being near the people getting shot with this stuff because I got some in my throat.
Back to the story, the picture of these people getting sprayed ended up all over the major news sites like MSNBC, and there I was standing next to the guy who snapped the shot seeing the same thing he saw. Kind of makes you wonder why they were still not getting their story about what happened straight.
Eventually the crowds dissipated for the most part. A few die hard protestors kneeled down in front of the gates and maintained the human wall, but we decided it was about time to leave.
After the Bush motorcade came through it was like the town shut down. Once Bush was home safe the cops just vanished along with the press. It was seriously like we got back on the subway to go see the Mall and when we surfaced, everyone was gone. The streets were still closed, the gates and press tents still up, but everyone was either gone or on their way out. The sun was going down and we wanted to go see some of the sites but the mood in the air was really different.
The only authority figures we ran into were army personnel and they were
all really cool . A group of them stopped us because they saw our rugby
jackets and just hung out for a while.They were asking us about the protest
and were clearly okay with the fact that that’s what we were doing.It
sounded like a few of them would have joined us.They were laughing at
Kelsey, who had dried pepper spray still all over his face, and talking to us
about rugby because some of them used to play.
The night wound down as we wandered through the mall. We spent the rest of the day riding here or there on the subway, the stench of pepper spray on our clothes burning the eyes and noses of the other passengers who were all dressed in tuxedos and on their way to the inaugural ball. It was a fitting end to the night as one woman, talking about us like we weren’t there, mentioned the protestors should have been sprayed with a hose too so the smell would have been washed off. I promptly told her that the “pepper spray was punishment enough” and called her out on being a huge bitch. She forced a smile at me and we changed trains. After a few more hours, we got back on the busses and made the twelve hour drive back to Michigan.
I hadn’t had any sleep up to this point and wasn’t looking for any as everyone on the bus stayed up till about four in the morning sharing stories, photos and just having a good time. Even now after writing this, it all still seems a little surreal. I’m back home in my room reading articles and looking at pictures of people I just met, talked to and marched with twenty four hours ago. This is always going to be a day that I'll never forget.