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Women's March
Saturday, January 21 2017
location: eighth floor, Watergate East Apartment Building, Washington, DC
Today was the day of the big Women's March, and me, Gretchen, and her parents were conveniently deployed at the Watergate, within walking distance of the march's beginning. I would've liked to make a sign, but there were no convenient supplies and I assumed all the local drug stores would've been cleaned out by the legions of other marchers who had already arrived. Gretchen's mother found me a magic marker though, so I added that to the things I would be carrying. I also made some goofy designs on PostIt notes, including "[Picture of an angry cat] Grab this, asshole!"
The Watergate is rather old-school posh, with a uniformed doorman at the bottom who opens the doors if you're leaving or entering on foot. We always thank him as he does so, though the anachronism and class implications make me (and, I'm sure, the others) uncomfortable. It wasn't long after leaving the Watergate that we found ourselves in a stream of other marchers converging on the National Mall. The stream started as a trickle and then became a brook and then a mighty river. The others had signs and, occasionally, outfits. And many of the women wore "pussy hats," pink knitted caps with either explicit ears or just corners abstractly suggesting them. We'd first seen a smattering of pussy hats yesterday, but today it was clear they were going to render ærial shots of the crowd pink. Pussy hats are a reference, of course, to Donald Trump's famous boast about being able to grab women by the pussy, a boast that apparently was not bad enough of a revelation to derail the shambolic train of his campaign.
Near the Washington Monument, our river of people stood out against the grassy emptiness of the landscape. Here people begin to take special notice of each others' signs, asking strangers if they would stop so a picture could be taken. Everyone was so affirmative that it started to feel like the crowd had developed the traits of a superorganism. The good kind, not the kind that eats sandwiches while hanging black men from trees. There was single man in the crowd at this point who held a sign that said, "WE SHALL OVERCOMB!" on one side and "FREE MAN-SPLAINING" on the other. For some reason, I found this hysterical, particularly when Gretchen's father posed with the guy for a photo. He's something of a serial mansplainer himself.
The mall was still set with tents and white plastic lawn-protection panels from the inauguration as we passed through it. Somewhere in there I found the remnants of someone else's cardboard sign, so I made a sign of my own: "Days without Trump saying something stupid:" And then I showed a box, like something that had been attached to a sign touting the number of days without a workplace accident, containing the number zero. Trump had indeed said at lest one stupid thing only this morning.
Eventually we met up with the bulk of the other protestors at the corner of 12th St. SW and Independence Avenue SW. In a little section of lawn at the back of the Freer Gallery of Art, we decided to stop because the human densities would've been too high had we proceeded any further. A fair number of people had climbed into tress for a better view, but there easier options for us nearby. Gretchen and her father climbed up into a window sill at the back of the gallery
(38.887830N, 77.027687W)
and had a clear view of a large screen placed about 100 feet away. It was one of many showing the assembled what people on some distant stage were saying. When we arrived, Michæl Moore was talking. Later the head of Planned Parenthood would talk, as would Tammy Duckworth and our own Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. A little Latino girl took the mike at one point and gave an impassioned speech in both English and Spanish, and there were a number of performances, including one by a female Muslim hip-hop artist. That's the kind of thing Donald Trump hopes to fix with an againing of greatness.
Speeches are an inevitable part of an event like this, but I was more interested in the folk art of the signs. There were so many, and some were a kind of great that Donald Trump has to be credited with having initiated. These included, "MEN OF QUALITY DON'T FEAR EQUALITY," "Are we GREAT F*%KED yet?", "FIGHT THE SHOWER" (featuring a picture of Putin pissing on Donald Trump from an erect penis), "THIS IS VERY BAD," "I CAN'T BELIEVE WE'RE STILL PROTESTING THIS SHIT," and "Who knew GOP meant 'Grab Our Pussies'." We stayed at our spot for at least an hour. Cellphone reception was spotty at best, though it seemed to work better on the Verizon network (Gretchen's phone) than it did on AT&T (mine). At some point Gretchen realized that Janine, the wife of my childhood friend Nathan, was less than a block away. The two communicated for a bit, and it would've been nice to get together, but in a crowd like this, it was as if we were separated by dozens of miles. I ate a sandwich Gretchen's father had made, climbed up on the window ledge to see over the crowd for a bit, and then the four of us decided to exit the crowd.
Once we got into the flow of humanity, it had a force all its own, especially as it passed through narrow apertures in the landscape. Eventually we ended up back on the mall, where it certainly seemed like a march was already underway. We were holding signs and going in a definite direction (west). Occasionally a roar would come up from behind, and we'd join in, and it would continue traveling as a wave of human elation beyond us. Other times we'd join in some chant such as "Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!" A pithy "Pence sucks too!" also started up a number of times. People loved that one.
Back near the Washington Monument, there was a great scene with over a dozen porta-potties in the foreground and the newly-rewhitened Whitehouse in the background. The porta-potties had all been rented by a service called Don's Johns. As someone later pointed out, "Don" and "John" are two of Donald J. Trump's names. The only one missing on the outside the porta-potties was "Trump." But that's just what one massively does in a porta-potty (if one is unlucky enough not to have taken care of that business back home).
The crowd was still substantial, though it thinned as we headed northwestward on Virginia Avenue. We hadn't seen a single counterprotestor in all that time, but somewhere along on Virginia Avenue, an embarrassed SUV hurried its way around the many protestors as a skinny little blond-haired boy leaned out the window and shouted "Booo!" and gave us the double-thumbs-down. We jeered, and I felt a jolt of adrenaline. Had he stayed longer, I might've dragged him from the SUV and given him a spanking. (That could've resulted in the only arrest in today's massive protest.)
Gretchen and her father went to Whole Foods for a few things while Gretchen's mother and I went back to the apartment in the Watergate. With some difficulty, I managed to bring up MSNBC on the teevee and we watched the coverage. It turned out that the march hadn't even begun yet, though crowd estimates were on the order of a half million. Not only that, but there were hundreds of similar demonstrations all over the United States and even the world. Over 100,000 people turned out in Boston, for example, and there had even been a protest in Antarctica. While we watched the coverage, Madonna took the stage and dropped a couple F-bombs before doing a clunky version of "Express Yourself."
Soon after the others got back from Whole Foods, Trump was expected to say some words from the CIA office in Langley, but in this stage of grief we still can't watch him talk, so we tried watching something else (a few minutes of Drunk History about Alexander Hamilton). Later I would read about the Langley appearance and learn that mostly featured Trump petulantly grousing about the media coverage of his inaugural instead of doing what the trip was supposedly arranged for (to make Trump seem presidential as he stood in reverence at a wall honoring agents who had died in the line of duty). Trump was now claiming a million and a half people had filled the mall, though the actual number had probably been 100 and 200 thousand. He was saying nothing at all about today's mass protests, though it seemed they had unhinged him.
They'd unhinged him so badly that later he sent Sean Spicer, his press secretary, out to do his first "presser" exclusively to gripe about their fact-based coverage of the inaugural and making a series of laughable, demonstrably-untrue claims like the reincarnation of Baghdad Bob. I don't know what Trump thought the effect of this would be, but it certainly gave the impression that we're going to have to fact-check (or assume the opposite) of whatever this new administration tells us. Trump failed his way all the way to the top and now it looks like the chain of unforced errors will continue. That's the power of white privilege.
Eventually I took a long nap, deciding not to go with the others when they wanted to see some free Shakespeare thing at the Kennedy Center (next door!). Instead I had a beer and sat alone with myself and the internet. It was some much-needed me time.
Later down in the kitchen, we had an improvised dinner of frozen samosas, frozen pizza, and kale with fava beans. Dinner conversation was mostly about food and food-preparation logistics, so my mind focused mostly on ideas I've been percolating, such as an idea for a JSON-based microdatabase to be used in my reporting tool.
The mansplainer with Gretchen's father. (Click to enlarge.)
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Me making my sign as the others pose for a photo taken by a stranger. (Click to enlarge.)
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Tammy Duckworth on the big screen.
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The impressive little girl who gave the impassioned speech on the big screen.
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A new definition of "GOP."
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I don't think Muslim women have been voting for all that time, but you go girl! (Click to enlarge.)
A scary but artistic rendering of Donald J. Trump.
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Two steps forward, a step and a half backwards. Wait, which way does the ratchet of history go?
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An actual Trumpian tweet from 2012.
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I'm sure Trump Tower contains a few golden showers. (Click to enlarge.)
Gretchen took all but one of this photos on her phone. She made this one her Facebook profile avatar picture.
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