I returned from the inaugural protest in DC about three hours ago, and have been trying to figure out how i am feeling and what i am going to do with myself since around 4 PM last night. I had not initially planned on going. I didn't think, and don't think, the protests were effective, but i was more or less( more "less" than "more"(excuse me while i revel in my own incoherence)) kidnapped by Lauren, Amelia, and Noah on wednesday morning while they were en route from New Haven to New York, for which i am grateful. The trip down to DC was uneventful until we hit Philly (noah claimed that it was faster to go through philly than through jersey. Noah was clearl;y wrong.) First, all lanes on the betsy ross bridge on 95 were shut down, so we tried to bypass the city to the west, whihc wound up taking five hours or so (we made a friend in the car next to us. Her name was Stacey, she was trying to get to dance class in Broomhall, and we fed her twizzlers.) I emphatically pointed out to A, L, and N when the barely moving crawel of traffic took us past the barely remembered places where i spent the first eight years of my life - Haverford, Ardmore, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore...
The traffic eventually cleared after we stopped for dinner, and we sped through Delaware and Maryland. I think time passed so quickly because we were having a really interesting conversation (for me, at least) about the UOC and organizing and "dropping out" and New Haven. We finally made it to DC around 1 AM. Noah and i collapsed on Noah's brother's couch. Just before i awoke i dreamt that i had lost all my hair and that it had fallen all over Noah's brother's carpet. A young african american woman who had also lost all her hair and whose hair was also all over Noah's brother's carpet tried to console me with the potentiality that i could now be like michael stipe. I awoke confused and disoriented and quickly became rather bemused.
Noah and i walked tot the Metro, where we met Lauren and Amelia, and we ate some food at a nearby whole foods market and made fun off the republicans sitting behind us. Then we got on the metro, which is set up exactly like the BART and is the most fascist subway system i have ever seen. It's sterile, unhgappy, dead, and policed with the iron hand of the same folks who just shot pepper spray pellets at non-violent protesters for no fucking reason. I'll get to that later. Anyway, before i knew it, we were in Malcom X Park, and there was Emily Jones, who i hadn't seen in eight months, since Erin and Saqib and I helped move Erin's bed (which used to be Katie's bed, which used to be Arthur's bed) into Emily and Gia's new apartment. Before i knew it, i was surrounded by UOCistas and other yale folks - Marissa (and her brother, who i thought was the tallest person i ever met until i met erin's housemate jacob who is literally twelve feet tall and on whose air matress i slept last night,) and Helena, and Gloria, and Gia, and Carolina and Sylvia. It was great to see all of them, and their singing made an otherwise useless march kind of powerful. It's a shame that Julie and Thomas couldn't make it and that Phoebe and Josh are just total punks. Just kidding, i love you kids. And it was really, really good to see Erin for the first time in eight months.
The maoists were ridiculous, dogmatic and annoying, but at least those of us on the DAWN march didn't have to deal with ANSWER (not to be sectarian or anything.) The anarchist-initiated splinter march didn't seem like it was really working too well. And then the cops reportedly decided to brutalize non-violent protestors for no reason (although arrests (and, for that matter, numbers) were nothing like what we saw with the NoRNC mobilizations here in august,) marking the first, or is that "frist" such incident of the day. Sometimes typos are downright revelatory. Still, i think the coffins remained siginifiers as powerful as they were in New York. Singing Woody Guthrie and "Carry It On" and "Solidarity Forever" held a profoundly strong symbolism for me - placing forth enduring visions of collectivity and the commons against the inauguration's celebration of greed, private power, and warmaking. Even "if i had a hammer" managed to be significantly less corny than usual. And no i am not a fucking hippy so fuck you.
Took off after the march with Erin, Carolina, Sylvia, and Erin's friend Tali. Had lots of run. Read some of Dorothy Fujita-Rony's book American Workers, Colonial Power: Phillipine Seattle and The Transpacific West 1919-1941. It's really good. Turns out she got her PhD at Yale and her Dissertation Committee consisted of David Montgomery, Michael Denning, and Hazel Carby, which makes a lot of sense. Went to the American Friends Service Committee's Installation of boots of the 1370 or so american soldiers killed in iraq thus far, plus a lot of civilian shooes representing the indeterminate number of iraqis killed since the invasion began. I had mixed reactions to the religiosity and sanctimoniousness explicit in the ways in which some of the exhibit was presented, (the music in the church seemed Garish and sappy and made me very angry for some reason) but I found it extremely powerful to hear families of the dead, and iraq war veterans talk about their loved ones and indict the Bush administration for it's war of lies and empire even as inaugural revelers drove by in pearly white stretch limousines flanked by black secret service cars and cop wagons blaring their sirens in an unsuccessful attempt to drown out the sorrows and righteous anger of the grieving.
Ethiopian Food and chilling out in Tali's apartment and telling the pee story in its entirety for the first time in a while and just hanging out with Erin in general were all good. Freaking out about my life and the future and forgetting my backpack in the process was not so good. Even worse was finding out this morning that while this was happening, A, N, and L were tear gassed and pepper sprayed and the DC PD pulled a Victoria Snelgrove on at least two women who were nonviolently protesting along the parade route at some point over the course of the evening. As far as i know, no one was killed, but i'm outraged and this seems a matter of luck rather than design.
So yeah I freaked out about stuff a little last night and i feel pretty shitty about it and i feel better now, though i still need a job real bad. And an apartment. And the Kid upstairs who is fucking around on the guitar needs to turn down the fucking volume oh god i am turning into a ninety year old man or maybe just an ageist asshole. Purple Haze really isn't that hard to play, kid.
The bus ride back to NY was uneventful. Read more of Rony's book, slept a bit, listened to jerk behind me make flirtatious phone calls to at least four different women. Felt slighlty jealous and slightly righteously indignated. Talked to Alek today. Alek, Erin and i are all on board to go get arrested should GESO strike. I will work on organizing others, which, for the record, is what i told Mary R. i would do when i saw her during the Atkantic City Strike. Speaking of which, the DC hotel settlement sounds fantastic. Alright, time to figure my life out.
If you're like me and you weren't able to get a hold of Piracy Funds Terrorism before it sold out, good news - you can download the whole album here, and it's pretty great - check out "pop," spliced with the beat from dead prez's "hip hop."
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