A huge cheer went up as the crowd inched past this sign on 7th Avenue.
From the School Of Inauthentic Journalism
New York, NY, Aug. 29th, 2004
Chicks with armpit hair, fags, dirtbag rejects (anarchists),
dogs for peace, pathetic leftover hippies, maoists, communists, bolshevik tendency-ists, black panthers, "loose hippy bitches," socialists, N.A.M.B.L.A., some regular people and god knows what else all crawled out of the woodwork today for the massive repudiation of the Bush agenda of
war, hate, lies, and greed. (And sanctimonious hypocrisy, cronyism, incompetence, and being a fake good ole' boy-redneck and all around major league asshole).
I arrived by myself, hoping to take pictures of police clubbing people over the head, teargas cannisters being chucked back at riot police, vandalism and overall mayhem. Unfortunately, none of that happened. The cops were amazingly non-confrontational. Most of them were in regular uniforms and did not try to interfere at all. The protesters were as creative as they were diverse. Being somewhat reluctant to cast my lot with the aforementioned freakshow I declined to bring a sign of my own and instead chose to hide behind a camera. The marchers formed into pockets each with it's own flavor, chant, signs and costumes. Diving into the gigantic blob of humanity I quickly fell in behind a group that had a huge paper machie float called "
The Dragon of Self Determination." They had a sound system hooked up to the mouth of the dragon and this Abbie Hoffman-ish guy was saying all kinds of hilarious shit from hehind the float. In the same pocket with them was a very distinctive group that I discerned to be "anarchists." The media had been filled with front page headlines about how they were going to terrorize the convention so I was amused to find myself marching right in front of them. They seemed to be pro-dirt and anti-everything else. (Later, the next day's Daily News would carry a picture of this same dragon going up in
flames right in front of MSG and a McDonald's. Apparently the anarchists leaped out in front of it and set on fire, though I missed all this.)
I drifted towards a corp of drummers. These were not the arhythmic hippy dirtbags we all remember from college, but a couple of pros with nearly a full kit leading a brigade of people playing pots and pans, bells, whistles, and plastic buckets. The collective sound of the drums stood out above the chants, loudspeakers, and conversation. There's something about drums that inspires a march, be it into battle or against a war, and I found it hard to resist the primordial pull of the drums. The intensity and the cadences varied, swelling as the crowd got angry or passionate, dissipating as people caught their breath. The drums boomed out of the canyon of 7th avenue and it seemed to me that I was right in the heart of the march. (Though after seeing aerial pictures I realized it was just a small pocket of people.) Then some girl handed me a bucket and a mallet and was like "Do you want my drum?" Of course I took it and soon I was flailing away like mad. People wearing death masks, dressed as tortured Iraqis danced feverishly. Others carried nearly 1,000 flag draped mock coffins. It was macabre and spooky. The march reached it's crescendo just before Madison Square Garden. People were chanting "
Bush Sucks!" (my personal favorite) and just screaming and yelling, banging on shit and making as much of a racket as possible like they were trying to drive away the evil spirits. The rest of the chants were pretty lame and it occurred to me that for all our effort the people to whom this message was addressed were either not listening, or laughing at us. They were able to laugh because the message was self-consciously non-threatening. Because to them political correctness is for pansy protesters. Do they give a shit about
political correctness? People were scared to be called "anti-american," or "against the troops," so they moderated their behavior and in doing so conformed to exactly what the right wanted them to be: Seen but not heard.
By now I had blisters on my hands and after three hours in the scorching sun, found myself thinking about eating a sandwich in the shade even as the crowd chanted, "
Change - the - Channel!" at a Fox News screen. So in keeping with the spirit I gave my drum to someone else and walked off in search of food and drink. Later, I talked to some
gay guy who said Kerry was campaigning like a "
Pussy!" It was funny to hear a gay guy say "Pussy" so emphatically, lisp and all. In a way he kind of personified the personality of the march: passionate and outraged, but in the manner of an effete gay guy. In other words, like a bunch of pussies.
By- Bozo
2004 Inauthentic Journalism Scholar
