Turn Your Back On Bush?

in order to participate in the kind of protest this website is organizing [link via the article em2 linked], you would have to actually believe that enough people are taking part in this protest that you'd be aware of the 'signal' to turn your 'back on bush.' the inauguration of president bush is going to be wall to wall people with historically tight security.

i went to a radiohead concert a few years ago at suffolk downs with my roommate and her two sisters. we lost The Teenager while we were racing to take spots in front of the stage. although we were within a few yards of The Teenager the whole time, we couldn't find her for over an hour. we saw her waving the pair of devil horns that she wore 24-7 above the crowd a couple of times, but we couldn't see anything or move in the crush of people. we were inside the most coveted section of the concert, surrounded by a mass of 30,000 radiohead fans in an open field. in return for being completely and utterly trapped, we were able to watch the concert on the stage, instead of video screens. that was a once in a lifetime experience.

the concert lasted for hours. it was impossible to move. there was no chance of finding a bathroom in that crush. there was a drunk asshole there with his long suffering girlfriend. he pawed her unconsciously like she was an inert object. total jerk. pushy. drunk. stupid. loud. drunk. aggressive. drunk. leaving involved negotiating a tsunami of bodies. they stepped on our stuff. they stepped on our feet. they pushed us from behind. this mob of thousands piled onto the trains waiting at the suffolk downs t-stop. the MBTA arranged a lot of extra service for that station. they did an amazing job of moving people through the system. miraculously, we fought our way through that bottleneck without losing each other.

president bush's inauguration is going to be attended by far more people than that. even if you turn your back, people won't know what you're doing. how are you going to get the signal to turn your back in that crowd? you won't be able to see anything more than four feet away from you. people will think you're just looking for someone. worse, someone might figure it out and decide to kick your ass. anyone involved in an altercation at this event will likely be arrested, especially protestors. those unlucky bastards can look forward to being on some future list of people who have to undergo full body cavity searches before they are allowed to travel by air in the US.