WASHINGTON, 19 January 2005 — While Republicans will be celebrating the inauguration of their president’s second term of office in Washington, activist groups plan to counter his inauguration on Thursday by demonstrating against President Bush’s economic agenda, the legitimacy of his election and the war in Iraq.
Despite this week’s record cold, Inauguration Week will feature rallies, marches and demonstrations with the focus on peaceful, family-friendly gatherings, said Shahid Buttar, a protest organizer.
Hundreds of groups throughout the country will participate, Buttar said, including Mobilization for Global Justice and the Committee to ReDefeat the President, a public affairs committee that sees Bush’s presidency as illegitimately won.
But the anti-war activists said Friday that the Bush administration is attempting to “privatize Pennsylvania Avenue” by reserving the inaugural parade route for political contributors and keeping protesters off “America’s Main Street.”
The privately funded Presidential Inaugural Committee is raising about $40 million to pay for the parade, inaugural balls and other events, and it plans to erect bleachers for some paying supporters along the route.
The organizers say thousands of demonstrators from around the nation will show up early on inauguration day anyway and claim the sidewalks to show the passing President Bush and a watching world that they object to “an unprovoked war of aggression” in Iraq.
“It is lawful to come to the parade,” declared Mara Veheyden-Hilliard, a lawyer for the Partnership for Civil Justice, one of the protest groups. “Everyone has a right to be there.”
“Democracy is not by invitation only,” said Katherine Stecher, campaign coordinator for the Nicaragua Network, another of the dissident groups.
The anti-war “counter-inaugural” is being organized by the ANSWER Coalition. ANSWER stands for “Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.” Brian Becker, the national coordinator, told journalists at a recent briefing at the National Press Club, that the coalition of liberal groups was formed shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in anticipation of the Bush administration using this terrorism as an excuse “to carry out a previously planned, aggressive, right-wing, militaristic foreign policy.”
The organizers said they had asked the National Park Service for permits for protest space along the parade route, and said their requests had been denied in order to accommodate the Presidential Inaugural Committee.
ANSWER and attorneys from the Partnership for Civil Justice and the National Lawyers Guild filed a lawsuit on Jan.14 saying the US government was engaged in political screening to grant exclusive access to financial and political supporters of the administration and curtail freedom of speech and assembly along Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day. Protesters say the lawsuit reveals internal documents from the 2001 Bush/Cheney Presidential Inaugural Committee.
Four years ago, thousands of protesters massed along the inaugural parade route to show their anger over the contested election in which President Bush gained his first term. Bearing signs such as “Hail to the Thief” and “Supreme Injustice,” they crowded the subways, got into sidewalk debates with inaugural guests and gave the historic day what some called “a real sense of democracy in action.”
This year, as George W. Bush is sworn in for a second term, the atmosphere promises to be calmer. Many of the mainstream liberal and antiwar groups have opted not to attend, saying the security planned for the first inauguration since the Sept. 11 attacks will make protesting difficult.
“We felt our focus has been and should continue to be this war,” said Tom Andrews, national director of Win Without War, an antiwar coalition of MoveOn.org.
