Protesting in New York City

Brian Wagner

Howdy, fellow Oregonians, from the Big Apple, home of quarter-million protests, the ten-dollar latte, and manicures for your pets. Quickly about me, before I go on with my first post. I'm a junior at Columbia University, and a veteran of the Oregon political scene (check out my soon to be published bio, Unfit for Blogging, which should be up on this page soon).

I meandered down to the rally today with little on my mind. I've never been much of the protesting type, because I honestly can't stand half the people who show up there. When I wasn't running to keep my distance from the Intifada and Nader-Camejo people, along with the occasional militant vegetarian feminist tattoo artist, I was joining in chants of "RNC Go Home," "Give the cops a raise," "Four more months," "This is what democracy looks like; Bush is what hypocrisy looks like," and my favorite slogan I saw on a poster, "Dick Cheney is an evil robot."

The protest was ultimately what you would expect from any political protest, an exercise in mass democracy of the visual sort. There was no cohesion to the chants, to the message, or to the people who showed up. I was even able to pick out my Chinese History professor in the crowd, looking much less professional than I had ever seen her.

At another time, when I might be an outsider to the march, I probably would have openly condemned all the people mixing messages; but as a participant, walking with everyone and talking to them, I realized that while this was a weakness of sorts, it was also a strength in that there were no expectations and no rules. While it is often said that the Democratic Party, and liberals as a whole, will argue with themselves if they have no one else to oppose, the general consensus among the progressives of the nation that Bush has to go created a general uniformity in itself, even if everything else about the rally clashed enough that you could imagine Carson from Queer Eye screaming, "No, no, it's all wrong! He's ruining the spaghetti sauce with all that gunk he's throwing in."

Marches are not about solutions, they are about fighting large problems through the raising of awareness. And this march, which was ultimately peaceful and well-run, did exactly that. With 250,000 people winding through Manhattan's streets, the world's media watched and saw nothing that it could scream on the headlines other than "Protestors Make Their Voices Heard" and "Tens of Thousands Take to the Streets." That, in my mind, is an indicator that a protest has satisfied all common expectations for decency. And if we want to convince anyone with a protest, instead of it becoming a self-serving exercise, we need to bow to convention and act in a manner that does not come across as off-putting to the average American (don't ask me how you judge the average American, it's a mythical measure just like the average student)

As a shameless photographer, I took dozens of pictures of signs, people, dogs with signs, babies with face paint, men in business suits, women in bikinis, and "large" men who had no right to take their shirt off. I saw, to be cliched, the face of democracy--or at least its liberal and sunburned side. I even got friends to take a picture of me, wearing a red bandanna, aviator sunglasses, and the Bus Project's own "Vote, F*cker" t-shirt. In all honesty, I wanted a souvenir of this rare event in modern American politics--the large-scale gathering of the unwashed masses.

I think what I was most heartened by was the mere fact that these people were out there to be a part of something that was about making your voice heard. They didn't resort to radio ads or O'Reilly rants on a tv set; they got out there and chanted, and banged drums, and walked for miles. Even when many of them would say that they hate the system and are cynical about all politicians, they still believed enough in the American political system to think that being seen and heard was a positive power. Deep inside, every one of those cynics had a little bit of a dreamer in them. I never thought I would find myself quoting the most-quoted peace song in the world, because I consider myself a student of international realism; but at this juncture, John Lennon just seemed to be the spiritual guide of this rag-tag gathering of Americans.

"You may say Im a dreamer,
but Im not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one."

Sorry for the disjointed nature of this writing; I am currently serving as an orientation leader for 1000+ freshman who are homesick. I'll do more editing in the future, but thanks to BlueOregon for just "being." It's a great site, a must-read if there ever was one, and a great forum for representing what makes Oregon special.

Reporting live from New York City, this is Brian Wagner, an Oregonian to the core, signing off.

By Brian Wagner Aug. 29, 2004