An-arch-y in Washington DC!
This past weekend there was a big protest in Washington DC. Cindy Sheehan was here along with over one hundred thousand other people and they marched on the White House chanting with signs and the whole thing.
At Talk Radio News, I got assigned to cover the protest, but there was a twist: there was also a smaller protest being held on the same day but a little earlier. The idea was that this smaller protest would conduct its business in the morning and then meet up with the big protest at noon for the big festivities (and the cookies and milk). This smaller was against the World Bank and the IMF.
And it was also full of Anarchists.
Now to this point, I really had no opinion concerning Anarchists. I suppose I knew they existed, somewhere, but I never really gave them much thought. I guess I broadly approved of them, being that were members of the radical left that most of the time I found kind of amusing and silly with their wide-eyed, snarling affirmations of conviction to really, really strange causes. But no more.
I do not like Anarchists.
The anti-World Bank protest was being held in Dupont Circle at 10:00 in the morning on Saturday (I knew this because TRNS gets releases about this kind of stuff ahead of time). In the week and a half I’ve been here in Washington, I have transformed into a very responsible, punctual person. So I showed up at 9:50, just to be safe. 10:00 came, then 10:30, 11:00, 11:30. Now, there were people there, normal protest people, dreadlocks, tie-dyed shirts, the whole deal (and don’t forget about the little clans of Anarchists), but they were all just sort of milling around aimlessly, some kind of weird Renaissance Faire from the future.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. When I first walked up to the protest, I heard a familiar melody wafting to my ears, riding on the humidity like a Leprechaun on a rainbow.
Dun di-dun di-dun --clap, clap--
As I got closer to a group who was chanting and clapping and dancing and kicking and shaking, I placed it, in spite of its different, now anti-Bush lyrics. It was the Fraggle Rock theme!
Unable to believe my luck (because I though it would sound great on the radio), I busted out my microphone and began recording them. I got about thirty seconds on tape before one of them saw me and scrunched up his face.
“Hey, hey you! Stop recording! Hey, hey!”
The guy, dressed in a high school cheerleader’s pleated (very short) skirt, high pig tails clamped with cute plastic barrettes, more than three days of stubble and two Wicked Witch of the West socks on his hands, jogged over to me and said, more or less, the following:
“We don’t want you to record us at this public event, where we came of our own free will, where we are in plain sight, and making a huge racket, to boot, because we are Anarchists. Later, when we are marching in the streets, we plan on putting bandanas across our faces, as if we were desperados. It would be ok to record us then. But now, with no bandanas, it is unacceptable. The irony of my being willing to publicly protest but unwilling to work with the press, who might be able to further broadcast my message, is lost to me. I am an idiot. I dress like I live in a dumpster. I have a credit card that my parents pay.”
So I obliged and didn’t record any more of them.
But that wasn’t the last of the Anarchists that day, oh no!
After the march finally began, a whole big wad of people (maybe a thousand) began walking down the middle of the Massachusetts Ave. The whole group made it down the street and then made several turns down other streets, ranting “Whose streets? Our streets!” the whole way. But then something strange happened. The entire group seemed to become confused and all packed into one intersection, blocking traffic and standing around. We seemed to have become lost.
But my friends, the bandana-ed Anarchists, felt they knew the way. With renewed resolve, they decided right was the direction to turn, and they resumed with their chanting, going down the street way from the rest of the group. As I saw this group of about one hundred fifty Anarchists leave the main group, I knew I had to go with them. Together we all made turns down different streets, but then, maybe five minutes out, they again became confused.
In the middle of a major street, blocking traffic, the Anarchists all brought out their cell phones and tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Eventually some kind of consensus was reached, and we all retraced our steps to the original intersection where we could just see the tail end of the rest of our group (who had turned left). We ran and caught up to them just blocks from the White House and Cindy Sheehan’s protest. The winded Anarchists didn’t miss a beat though, and marched right back into the thick of things.
I stood next to one rather normal looking protester, a man of maybe forty with a brown Bill Watterson mustache, as we both watched the black clad army of seventeen and eighteen year olds parade into the anti-war protest. He and I made eye contact and I shrugged. He moved like he was about to say something, but then paused, and decided better of it. I laughed and nodded my head.
“Seriously,” I said.
At Talk Radio News, I got assigned to cover the protest, but there was a twist: there was also a smaller protest being held on the same day but a little earlier. The idea was that this smaller protest would conduct its business in the morning and then meet up with the big protest at noon for the big festivities (and the cookies and milk). This smaller was against the World Bank and the IMF.
And it was also full of Anarchists.
Now to this point, I really had no opinion concerning Anarchists. I suppose I knew they existed, somewhere, but I never really gave them much thought. I guess I broadly approved of them, being that were members of the radical left that most of the time I found kind of amusing and silly with their wide-eyed, snarling affirmations of conviction to really, really strange causes. But no more.
I do not like Anarchists.
The anti-World Bank protest was being held in Dupont Circle at 10:00 in the morning on Saturday (I knew this because TRNS gets releases about this kind of stuff ahead of time). In the week and a half I’ve been here in Washington, I have transformed into a very responsible, punctual person. So I showed up at 9:50, just to be safe. 10:00 came, then 10:30, 11:00, 11:30. Now, there were people there, normal protest people, dreadlocks, tie-dyed shirts, the whole deal (and don’t forget about the little clans of Anarchists), but they were all just sort of milling around aimlessly, some kind of weird Renaissance Faire from the future.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. When I first walked up to the protest, I heard a familiar melody wafting to my ears, riding on the humidity like a Leprechaun on a rainbow.
Dun di-dun di-dun --clap, clap--
As I got closer to a group who was chanting and clapping and dancing and kicking and shaking, I placed it, in spite of its different, now anti-Bush lyrics. It was the Fraggle Rock theme!
Unable to believe my luck (because I though it would sound great on the radio), I busted out my microphone and began recording them. I got about thirty seconds on tape before one of them saw me and scrunched up his face.
“Hey, hey you! Stop recording! Hey, hey!”
The guy, dressed in a high school cheerleader’s pleated (very short) skirt, high pig tails clamped with cute plastic barrettes, more than three days of stubble and two Wicked Witch of the West socks on his hands, jogged over to me and said, more or less, the following:
“We don’t want you to record us at this public event, where we came of our own free will, where we are in plain sight, and making a huge racket, to boot, because we are Anarchists. Later, when we are marching in the streets, we plan on putting bandanas across our faces, as if we were desperados. It would be ok to record us then. But now, with no bandanas, it is unacceptable. The irony of my being willing to publicly protest but unwilling to work with the press, who might be able to further broadcast my message, is lost to me. I am an idiot. I dress like I live in a dumpster. I have a credit card that my parents pay.”
So I obliged and didn’t record any more of them.
But that wasn’t the last of the Anarchists that day, oh no!
After the march finally began, a whole big wad of people (maybe a thousand) began walking down the middle of the Massachusetts Ave. The whole group made it down the street and then made several turns down other streets, ranting “Whose streets? Our streets!” the whole way. But then something strange happened. The entire group seemed to become confused and all packed into one intersection, blocking traffic and standing around. We seemed to have become lost.
But my friends, the bandana-ed Anarchists, felt they knew the way. With renewed resolve, they decided right was the direction to turn, and they resumed with their chanting, going down the street way from the rest of the group. As I saw this group of about one hundred fifty Anarchists leave the main group, I knew I had to go with them. Together we all made turns down different streets, but then, maybe five minutes out, they again became confused.
In the middle of a major street, blocking traffic, the Anarchists all brought out their cell phones and tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Eventually some kind of consensus was reached, and we all retraced our steps to the original intersection where we could just see the tail end of the rest of our group (who had turned left). We ran and caught up to them just blocks from the White House and Cindy Sheehan’s protest. The winded Anarchists didn’t miss a beat though, and marched right back into the thick of things.
I stood next to one rather normal looking protester, a man of maybe forty with a brown Bill Watterson mustache, as we both watched the black clad army of seventeen and eighteen year olds parade into the anti-war protest. He and I made eye contact and I shrugged. He moved like he was about to say something, but then paused, and decided better of it. I laughed and nodded my head.
“Seriously,” I said.
posted by August Caravalho at 6:08 PM
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