First, a note on the military parade that occurred in D.C. yesterday:
Shobhit and I were much relieved to find that preparations for this ridiculous display of "
military might" did not interfere with any of our plans during our visits, which was from June 4 through June 10—we left four days before the event took place. The most we saw was a lot of work being done to erect tall panels of interlocking mesh metal barriers all around the White House and along the outside perimeters of the National Mall—in some cases, if I remember right, simply on both sides of footpaths through the National Mall. Nothing ever got fully closed off while we were there, but it was clear that they would be by the time the 14th arrived.
I did not discover until during the flight home on Tuesday (the 10th), which I spent entirely writing up my
"PART ONE" travelogue, that all the memorials on the National Mall—and thus presumably most attractions on the Mall—would be "closed." I wish now that I had gotten screenshots, because now that the dates have passed the notes are gone, but when I went to look up the National Park Service web pages for each of these memorials to provide hyperlinks, every one of them had a temporary note at the top to say it would be closed on June 14. And it never said anything about President Fuckwit's birthday, but rather claimed it was to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army's founding.
I immediately thought: well, I guess that makes sense. Everyone I hear talk about it refers to it as "Trump's military parade," and this gives President Fuckwit supporters a kind of plausible deniability—they
say it's not just or the president's fragile ego, it's to celebrate the Army's birthday! Never mind the fact that the United States has never done anything like this when not celebrating the resolution of an armed conflict (as in the
end of the Gulf War—the last time this was done, 34 years ago—of the end of World War II). Threads, which has evolved halfway in the direction of the same kind of cesspool of idiocy that Elon Musk turned Twitter into, is rife with right-wing responses to this effect: "It's not a Trump parade! It's the 250th birthday of the Army you morons!" (My favorite counter-response to this was why don't we have these giant parades for other branches of the armed forces, whose birthdays don't happen to fall on President Fuckwit's birthday?)
I should note one other thing Shobhit and I did see on the National Mall, which was a pretty big clue: a
giant "U.S. ARMY" banner above bleacher seating, clearly intended as viewing for the military parade to pass by on Constitution Avenue, the street that lines the north side of the National Mall. We saw this while walking between the Washington Monument and the National Museum of African American History and Culture on Monday night, when we returned so I could get some nighttime pictures. I already knew it was a "military parade," though, so it was hardly surprising that there would be a banner for the U.S. Army—I did not realize it was officially celebrating that specific branch.
I will confess, even as someone who is anti-war, it kind of made me feel a little better about it all. There continues to be a great deal of media coverage of President Fuckwit having "long dreamed" of having a display like this during his presidency, and there remains little doubt that this parade was pointless and a giant waste of taxpayer money. I was just glad that we haven't gone so far (yet?) as making it officially about celebrating that vile man's birthday, which is what I had been kind of led to believe it would be. It clearly still is, unofficially, but the fact that organizers are still being careful about optics feels like a sign of something to be at least cautiously optimistic about.
To be clear, though, I'm still delighted that it was met with massive protests around the country, and in some cases even
outside the country (
around the world, even)—and that spectator attendance at the military parade in D.C. (250,000, a possibly dubious
official claim by the White House) was massively dwarfed by the total nationwide participation in the No Kings Mass Protest (
4-6 million, possibly even larger than the first Women's March in 2017). This has to have gotten deeply under President Fuckwit's skin, and that makes me happy.
Seattle turnout was massive, which was clear just by being there—and quite convenient for us that the rally preceding the March was held at Cal Anderson Park, all of two and a half blocks from where we live. It was scheduled to start at noon, and that was what time we left. The crowd was huge already by the time we got there, some people even climbing the fencing behind the baseball diamond at Bobby Morris Playfield.
Apparently multiple sources are citing "
over 70,000 participants in the Seattle event. There is an
unofficial crowdsourcing page accounting for estimates in a ton of different locations, and few cities of comparable size have that high a number (the estimate for Portland shows 20,000). There's a
Facebook post of a drone shot above Cal Anderson Park, as the crowd files into Pine Street for the march down to Seattle Center, getting shared a lot. The crowd is clearly massive, and it doesn't even show everyone: the march was underway by then, and had already reached the bend in Pine Street where it curves to the left at Melrose Avenue, and you can't see the crowd beyond that point.
It's been four months now since Shobhit and I went to the
Town Hall by our House representative, Pramila Jayapal—who also spoke at the rally yesterday—which turned me back around after years of disillusionment with the efficacy of protest. That experience combined with persuasive arguments on the season premiere of
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver made me realize the flaw in my thinking. It may often feel like demonstrations and protests hold no sway over the people you're opposing, but John Oliver listed several key examples of policy changes that would not likely have occurred without it.
Shobhit, on our walk down there, even brought up whether all the people there voted for Kamala Harris—our only hope for defeating Trump, regardless of how you felt about her—and this had long been a point I had been stuck on as well. Instead, this time, I said: "That's no longer relevant." This is where we are now. The only relevant discussion is how to move forward with effective action.
And it's pretty easy to argue times are critical at the moment. Rallies and protests across the state of Minnesota were canceled (though I read later the large one at the State Capitol in Saint Paul still happened) because of the assassination attempts, a couple of nights ago, on two state legislators—one of them successfully (Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman
was killed by a man posing as a police officer, as was her husband, Mark; state senator John Joffman and his wife were also shot but they survived—all of this occurred late Friday night, technically dating the attacks on June 14). There was a moment during the march yesterday, after Shobhit and I had made our way to the front, that the white-haired man driving the truck at the front
stopped and opened his door to address the crowd, asking that people stay behind him, for safety reasons. He told us he was there just in case an attacker tried to ram a car through the crowd (not at all an implausible risk, these days), and he could drive in their way. But with crowds ahead of him, he can't drive through them to do that. (For the record, Shobhit and I were always right behind that truck, we never walked ahead of it.)
I thought a lot about power in numbers as we walked in that march, which stretched up to 4th & Cedar, where it turned right and then curved to the left to continue up 5th until turning into Seattle Center at Thomas Street—that made a
distance of two miles. The crowd moved pretty slowly, and Shobhit and I made our way to Pine Street out of Bobby Morris Playfield before the final speaker was done, and people were already marching westward down Pine. As I said, Shobhit and I made our way toward the front of the march, not pushing through people exactly but just taking opportunities where we could—we got to the front at about the point of turning northward on 4th Avenue downtown, so, roughly half the route. My point is, basically everyone else would have taken longer, but Shobhit and I stepped onto Pine from the park on Capitol Hill at about 1:10, and arrived at Seattle Center at 2:25, so it took us about 75 minutes to walk those two miles, an average pace of 1.6 mph. And that included
a brief stop at La Perisienne Bakery on 4th Avenue where we bought a chocolate croissant.
Once we got to Seattle Center, we didn't stay long. Probably no one did, at least not until the crowd amassed again and the end of the mach reached the International Fountain. I took a couple of photos from above Fisher Pavilion, both before and after we went into the Armory to use the bathroom. The lines were already getting long when we got to the main bathrooms on the ground floor, but Shobhit, being Finance Manager (and previously a Board member) for Theater Puget Sound, knew where to go straight up to the location of their offices and theatre space on the 4th floor, to use bathrooms that were practically empty. We tried the elevator and it was taking too long, so we took the stairs—and discovered an unlocked door marked "roof access"! You know I had to investigate
that, but alas, the
door at the top of the next flight was indeed locked. Oh well, it was worth trying.
After that, Shobhit had some time to kill until his stage reading rehearsal was to start at 5:30, and at this point it was about 3:00. I suppose I should note here that, although we used the World Pride Washington D.C. trip as our "anniversary trip" this year, yesterday itself was our actual anniversary—and we spent it protesting President Fuckwit. It was as good a way to spend it as any! And, I guess you could say we had our anniversary dinner at Taco Del Mar. We walked together down 1st Avenue from Seattle Center toward Pike Place Market, and we went into Taco Del Mar and shared an order of "Loaded Nachos," which were on the daily special schedule for Saturday. (Not a huge deal: regular price $10.75; we got it for $9.99). Shobhit has noted in delight any time we've passed a Taco Del Mar for years, and I can't remember if I've ever even eaten at one before.
After that we went to (somewhat ironically) the U.S. Army and Navy Surplus store. I actually bought a very good quality hooded navy blue windbreaker for $38. I'm really trying to replace the light jacket I was given by someone at UNFI like two decades ago that I really love, and this isn't the same style, but sometimes you just have to move on I guess.
Shobhit and I then walked further down 1st, through Pike Place, and then down to the waterfront. We were going to go out on Pier 62, but found it blocked off for a ticketed, queer-themed "
Pink Party." I looked it up and general admission tickets were $68. Ha! Have a good time, money wasters! (I know, that's not fair. It's not wasted if it's worth it to them; same as the money we spent on, say, trips to World Pride.)
The weather was much sunnier yesterday than initially forecast. I was glad to have put on sunscreen right before we left home. Shobhit and I walked down the waterfront and we even sat on the rocky beach for a while at Pioneer Square Habitat Beach—the very place, in fact, that Laney and I are going to today for a BYOB Happy Hour after the movie we go to late this morning. Which means I need to get this posted so I can start getting ready for that!
Shobhit walked me back to the RapidRide G bus stop, after we stopped at the Colman Dock ferry terminal for him to use the bathroom. Finally he left to head down to his rehearsal spot in SODO, and I caught the bus home. With the extra time I had, I updated all the hyperlinks for the Social Review I'll be posting for June in less than a week, in this case finally backfilling all the links for everything Shobhit and I did in Washington, D.C. Full circle! It all comes back to . . . capital.
[
Click here for my full photo album for the No Kings Mass Protest in Seattle,]
[posted 8:41 am]
