March 19 DC Protests - Rain, Theater, Arrest:  Questions by Citizens Posed to the Grim, Silent Authority of a Government Committed to War 

by Zach Lindsey, photos by Zach Lindsey

Grim Uncle Sam

At around three o'clock on March 19, Grim Uncle Sam and his family come in out of the rain to sit for some lunch at a Cosi in Downtown Washington.

Grim Uncle Sam wears death paint and a fake goatee, a Saint Patrick's Day hat painted red and affixed with stars, crimson striped pants and melted red theatrical blood on his hands. He's in from Philadelphia with his wife and daughter to remind everyone that the War in Iraq has gone on five years too many.

I ask him if it's his young daughter's first protest. She can't be more than seven.

"No", he says. "I have this memory of her being this big", and he gestures to imply she must've been an infant, "in the streets with us. So this is pretty much par for the course for her."

Somewhere outside, a bobble-headed Dick Cheney is running around along-side soldiers dressed in pink and a sheep dragging around an amplifier for special music.

The SDS Funks the War

SDS funks through DC for a democratic society

When the rain was just a rumor, the Students for a Democratic Society brought music to McPherson Park. They had a permit to be there, but they didn't have a permit to drag an amplifier through the streets around McPherson, all the while grooving in a celebration of youth, screaming "Funk the War!" So the cops shoved them back to McPherson, where, for a while, they were contented to play Rage Against the Machine songs. But one SDS leader eventually came out into the crowd and started a notice.  

"We aren't going to fight the cops because that'll get us hurt" he says. Not over the mic. Quietly. "But we're going back to the streets." As soon as he says it, the crowd mentality changes. The news spreads over the crowd in a quick wave, and soon people are marching out of the park. The cops are all around, but they don't even realize it's happening.

One SDS member is saying over the microphone, "From Iraq to Afghanistan, to New Orleans, it's the youth that bear the brunt of war." The spirit of this march is infectious. People who are on their way to work stop, because they have to. The streets are blocked. The protesters are howling call-and-response style "Whose streets? Our streets!"

Even though the workers have no choice but to stop, once a worker does stop, a protester inevitably says to them, "Why don't you take off today, and join our protest? I'm off of work today." And some people giggle and are shy, but you can see that they believe in what this protest is about. Others are ready to jump in.

The SDS danced off past the Die-In at the CAT building, and blocked the doors to as many office buildings as they could. The whole time, they were followed by scores of police on bikes and in cars. But no one stopped them.

No police were around when one protester stuck his sign in between the cop car's windshield wipers, and police didn't notice until it was too late that someone had applied a sticker to the driver's side window that said "Peace Please". That certain someone hung around long enough to get his photo taken in front of his pride and joy.

The rain started about halfway into the march. Just drizzles at first, and even once it was downpouring, no one thought to quit. The protesters stopped for some groove time in front of a heavily-guarded building, and shook tambourines, water bottles and booty at the serious-looking security guards standing outside. Then it was right back where they started from, to McPherson Park, all along the way asking anyone who honked a car horn to join them.

Attack of the Bobble-Headed Cheney

The bobble headed Cheney, in case you wouldn't know

In the middle of an interview with a polite BBC reporter scribbling rapid shorthand, Sarah Tombler looked up to see Dick Cheney's giant face rushing toward her with bow-legged and psychotic steps. His pink piece of poster board matched hers, except that his said "I love Greed and Corrupton".

"Print it, pack it and ship it. Money money money", he shouted. He tells her to give up on protesting. "Eighty percent of Italians were opposed to the war, but they did what we told them to - that's democracy!" he said. Then he took off the mask, to reveal an older man who was gaunt and tall. He said, "Sometimes wearing this mask makes me feel like I'm going crazy. I woke up this morning and there was a Condoleezza Rice mask in bed next to me." 

The Crime Scene that Never Happened

Some time during the SDS protest, Sarah and I met up with Ben from Kansas, whom we had trained with in non-violent civil resistance two days earlier. The Kansas resident threw in with our group and trekked over to the White House with a cardboard anti-war sign that was beginning to melt in the rain.

On the advice of Emily Clymer, we walked to the White House. This concept was a continuation of the earlier action by the Veterans for Peace: writing up the paperwork for a citizen's arrest of President Bush. So now, the plan was to wrap the fence around the White House in crime scene tape.

For whole blocks, the city was empty of protesters. Just regular people in a regular city. But then, you'd turn a corner to find an old woman with a "Get out of Iraq now" sign, or some kids from New Jersey would stop you to ask you where the protest was. The answer is, it's scattered all over the city. And in hundreds of places around the world. So we walked past the Veterans for Peace and the Funk the War people and headed for Pennsylvania Ave. But something was wrong about the scene when we got there. First, there were more cops than protesters. And the sense of anger was different. More direct. It was focused on the police, instead of general.

The small but devoted crowd that was left around the White House encircled a young speaker. He was yelling, while some crowd members held torn-up pieces of caution tape above their heads. The young speaker spoke rudely, with angry curses, and finally, he said, "The cops are making their own rules as they go. You can place tape on a fence as long as you take it down before you go."

Now, I couldn't find any law saying either way, but there was tape around the IRS earlier that day. But the story started and ended before we got there. The woman who had the tape was immediately arrested, and with more cops than protesters, no one seemed to want to risk being the next person to go down.

So with our pants wet to the knees, we set off back toward McPherson.

Ben said to us, "I'm going to talk to my congressperson, or at least go stand outside her office." and he walked off. You can't have rigid plans here. Who knows what direction you'll end up walking.

The March of Ghosts

The cops arresting ghosts  

At five p.m., the reflection in the Capital reflecting pool is of the Washington Monument, and an army of ghosts. The March of the Dead had traveled all over DC in their black outfits and death masks. Silent and holding signs with a name and an age. The name and age of an American military or Iraqi civilian casualty of the Iraq war. They appeared throughout the day. Turn a corner and the ghosts are marching there. They march right past you, silently. You can't see their faces. The masks don't even look like they have eye holes.

And now, they are standing still. Preparing for their final movement. Every protester in the city, or at least every one that I've randomly ran into over the weekend, is here. Not all of them are marching, but many of them hop on the end of the single-file line. The plan is to walk to the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

It's almost silent now, but people are grabbing pots and pans, drumsticks, junk to bang together, air horns. The march starts slowly. The end can't even see the beginning. At a crosswalk, the marchers stop for cars to pass by.

Univision is here filming. Cameras are readied. The rain fogs up lenses, but there is a race along the side of the march taking pictures. Even protesters have their cameras out. But not the people wearing the death masks. We see the faces of the people who are going to be there. Ashley Casale, Dan Murphy, Ben from Kansas, Sarah, Emily, Laura Heath, Sara, Gabe Elder, Noah Jacobs. And especially the police. But we never see the faces behind those death masks.

At First and Constitution, the march spirals in on itself, in the middle of the road. The lead marchers freeze in the street. "Whose streets?" "Our streets".

The cops show discipline and so do the protesters. Cops issue first warning. Everyone who will not participate in the action moves to the sidewalk, pushing and shoving to stay up front. The cops encircle the protesters. It's a wide circle.

Second warning. We all know no one who is out there is going to come in off the street.

And exactly like they are trained to do, third warning, and they move in to make arrests. The arrests occur one at a time, perfectly ordered. Silence from the mouths of the death masks. A few of them lie down. But the demonstrators on the street start up. The people united will never be defeated. Chants, screams, screeches from air horns you bought in the dollar store. The one harmonica, bouncing counter-point to the chants. Noah Jacobs hops on a bullhorn. He says, "If there's any Democrats in the house, if you ever, EVER, want my vote, you better end this ... war!"

Noah Jacobs on the mic: "If you ever want my vote, you better end this ... war."

Every time the walk sign lit up, Jacobs dances across the street. Once the arrests are through, the cops just watch. "In this part of town we get this a lot," says one police officer. He is calm, quiet.

Jacobs speaks to the cops over the bullhorn. He reminds them of the first responders at the World Trade Center, who have gotten sick, and barely given any support for it by the Federal Government. If there was a terrorist attack in DC, what would the Feds do for the local police?

Later, Jacobs said, "I kept on trying to refocus the energy of the chants and rhetoric towards the war, and the Bush administration. I think that it does our cause injustice when we as protesters of the Iraq war descend into a kind of anarchic 'all authority is the enemy' type of attitude. Thanks to the police yesterday, we were able to protest loudly but peacefully, and impact thousands of passing motorists."

The protesters said that about 25 people were arrested, including nine from OurSpringBreak.org.

Many protesters are staying at least one more day in the city. Coordinated actions will continue for at least another week. The media made its usual claim, that there were less protesters here than ever before, although considering that some protests over the course of this event were as small as single-person street theater, I think numbers are impossible to understand. And that doesn't include people around the world who observed the date.

The protesters are going back to school, returning to their lives but not forgetting. What's next?

"I've been very disappointed, disgusted really, with the Democratic congress so far, and their backing down on Iraq," Jacobs said. "I think we as protesters need to let them know loud and clear that they cannot simply take the anti-war vote for granted."