THE SACRAMENTO BEE - JANUARY 21, 2001
Protesters vent their unhappiness
By Kevin Diaz and Alex Parker
Bee Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - It had been more than a quarter-century since Pennsylvania Avenue had been as jammed with demonstrators for a presidential inauguration as it was Saturday.
D.C. police gave no crowd estimate, as has become their custom, but along many parts of the parade route, demonstrators seemed to outnumber other spectators. At Freedom Plaza, a block from the White House, protesters chanting "Hail to the thief" took over a bleacher intended for parade watchers and drowned out the official public address system.
Protesters clashed briefly with police clad in riot gear at a few flash points while President Bush remained inside his armored stretch car for most of the parade.
A couple of protesters threw bottles and tomatoes before the presidential limousine arrived, and one hurled an egg that landed near the motorcade, the Secret Service said.
But the protesters managed little else to interrupt the festivities in the face of a massive show of 7,000 police officers.
"We're offended, because they didn't count the votes," said Mike Soukup, a San Jose accountant, one of scores of self-described "ordinary people" protesting Saturday's inauguration.
Demonstrators carried protest signs, some of them obscene, some of them merely insulting, such as "Smirk the Jerk."
Police reported eight arrests. One of the people arrested was charged with assault with a deadly weapon after slashing tires and trying to assault an officer, one official said. Several other arrests came after a few scuffles involving riot police police and black-clad anarchists who, in one instance, burned a flag on a street corner a few blocks away from the parade route.
But the vast majority of the protesters were peaceful. Judith Lewis, an editor at the L.A. Weekly, said that in contrast to the radical demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles last summer, many of the inaugural protesters seemed to have been newly galvanized by the election.
"This is a much more mainstream crowd," said Lewis. "I think a lot of people now are going to be motivated to become more active in the next four years."
Indeed, it appeared that the inauguration brought out thousands of occasional and first-time demonstrators from California and elsewhere, most of them galvanized by the contested vote in Florida.
"I don't like how (Bush) supposedly won the election," said David Farmer, a college student from Sacramento who was attending his first protest. "I think it's a little shady that he won in his brother's state."
Nathaniel Khaliq, president of the St. Paul, Minn., NAACP, brought a busload of pickets with him and likened it to a freedom ride, recalling African Americans' historic struggle for voting rights.
"A lot of people lost their lives for the right to vote," he said. "We owed it to them and to our children to make sure (injustice) doesn't go unchallenged."
Traci Yokoyama, a college student from Irvine, expressed similar sentiments.
"I'm protesting because it's terrible the way this election was run," she said. "People shouldn't have to worry about whether their votes are counted or not."
Protests were reported at various other sites around the country. In Sacramento, a nonpartisan group of 500 people gathered at the State Capitol over what they called a "stolen election."
Protesters demanded a fair electoral process and an end to racial discrimination at the polls. Paul and Brenda Hammond of Sacramento objected to how African Americans were disenfranchised in Florida.
"Black people were denied their right to vote," Paul Hammond said, adding that he didn't think Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore fought hard enough for justice for African American voters.
Jen Ferr, a member of the Sacramento County Green Party, waved a sign with the words "A dark day for democracy."
Ferr dressed in all black and wore a crown reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty.
Mike Irwin of Sacramento carried a sign in the shape of a tombstone noting the death of democracy: "Born July 4, 1776, died Dec. 11, 2000, killed by the Supreme Court of the United States."
"I am outraged by the Supreme Court's decision," Irwin said. "I feel that it sets a dangerous precedent for the state of our democracy."
At the inauguration in Washington, Berkeley native Susan Deutscher helped demonstrate the broad cross-section of people protesting the election. She carried a poster saying "Privileged, White, Straight People Against Bush."
Deutscher, marching with friends from an East Coast literary magazine, said she was motivated by a deep dislike for Bush.
"But I want to show the world that he doesn't have a mandate," she said. "Opposition to him is broad-based."
Not all the chants came from the anti-Bush crowd. A small, all-male group of counterdemonstrators taunted the much larger protest group with the chant, "We're rich, we're here, get used to it!"
Others just came to watch or to be watched. Among them was Robert Burck, a Cincinnati guitar player who serenaded the crowd wearing a pair of briefs, a cowboy hat and an American flag.
"I go to all the big events," he said. "Whether they are political or not."
Bee staff writer Gwendolyn Crump and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
