With temperatures in the early part of the week in the teens and twenties, my friend J and I were having doubts about our plans for inauguration, but Thursday Januray 20 we awoke to a beautiful sunny day with temperatures in the balmy mid-thirties!

J and I were originally planning to take part in Turn Your Back on Bush, the nonviolent silent protest where the only dissent would be the simple act of turning away from Bush's motorcade as it passed down Pennsylvania Avenue. We set off under an oppressive cloud: even Metro had a list of banned objects, including backpacks!

Arriving at Gallery Place-Chinatown, we walked down to the public access point near 10th St, having heard this was the likeliest place for the general public to gain access. Even before we reached the line, it was apparent that dissenters were out in force, with roving protesters carrying signs and a surprisingly large number of scruffy looking people waiting in line with us, probably with the same sorts of ideas in mind. We waited about 40 minutes before reaching the metal detectors. The police and military operating security were polite and helpful, but alas, I really shouldn't have worn my studded metal belt. Why didn't I leave it at home!?! I pulled J out of line as he expressed relief, "At least we don't have to pretend to be Republicans anymore!" We set off to meet the DC Anti-War Network's march from Malcolm X Park, due to arrive at McPherson Square soon.

At McPherson, we met up with the tail end of ReDefeat Bush's rally, and hung around until DAWN's march arrived, thousands strong; they just kept coming, noisy, colorful, and, as J observed, "A lot more fun than the folks waiting in line." We listened to a couple speakers before the cold took the better of us, and we walked down to Lafayette Park- or what was accessible of it!

Which was nothing, of course, Peace Park having been annexed for the grand reviewing stand, which I assume had the highest price tickets given its' proximity to the White House and Bush himself.

H and 16th was the location chosen by DAWN for their civil disobedience die-in, and we arrived to find about 20 protesters lying "dead" in the street, many covered in "blood". Less than 30 feet away was the entrance for the special ticket holders taking their seats at the reviewing stand, so there was a steady stream of inauguration ticket-holders past the bodies lying in the street, with the comments I'm sure you can all imagine.

Actually, given the number of small children attending with their parents, I think this action had the potential for planting the most seeds. I heard at least two parents trying to explain to their kids why these folks were lying on ice cold pavement as police cars tried to navigate around them.

These DAWN people have some serious dedication, let me tell you. We walked back to McPherson when we started getting chilly, where the march had somehow managed to fit into the parks boundaries (organizers and police both estimated a crowd of about 10,000 people!)

Walking back to thee die-in an hour later, everyone was still lying on the ground with hardly a shiver in sight! By this time the DAWN resisters had been joined by activists from Jonah House, DC Catholic Worker and others of similar bent. J and I joined them, holding banners as a backdrop to the mass of bodies and singing for the next hour or so. As the more recent arrivals packed up, the DAWN folks still lay in the street as the women in fur coats and the men in cowboy hats filed past in disgust or stopped to have their pictures taken in front of this spectacle, thumbs up and grinning. As I commented to J, I wonder if any of them realized how much they looked like the images from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

At this point we decided to check out the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue, but didn't really see anything else going on. Cold, tired, and hungry, we decided to pack it in and go home. Later we realized that there was something of a pitched battle going on, with reports of both police and protester injuries. While I can't say whether police or protesters started the violence (you can probably guess my suspicions, especially when you see the footage of cops hosing kids down with pepper spray), and I don't approve of property destruction ( on tactical grounds) or violence against people (even cops) (on moral grounds), I'm glad these folks were there too.

One of the things I was struck by about the various protests was there was a sense of separate-but-united: the DAWN die-in was disciplined and nonviolent, and got to stay in a high profile area, and the rough and tumble folks had their say with the security measures and Bush!

There's always a lot of talk of lack of achievement based on a lack of media coverage, but I say that mainstream media coverage should not be our measure of success. We have to measure success by the numbers of people who join us the next time around, by the numbers of people who tell us they're sick of the hypocrisy too, by the numbers of Republican parents in the difficult position of explaining why those people are pretending to be dead, by the number of kids who might grow up to think for themselves instead of parroting their parent's narrow-minded views, by the soldiers and service people who refuse to follow their deployment orders, and by the energy we can raise together.

While J and I were thwarted in our initial plans, and we left before the parade closed, and the protests went on as the Inaugural Balls celebrated the murder of a million or more civilian Iraqis and the re-coronation of King George II, it was worth it, and we'd do it again.

Just some thoughts.