OUT OF STEP

As you probably know quite well, left-wing activists don't want military recruiters hanging around high school campuses. No great surprise, this fact. But now I know why: they don't want competition! Of course, it's no great realization to recognize that the streets surrounding such a secondary school are a pretty good place to sign up impressionable near-adults for your cause. And as plenty of you know, I live across the street from Cardozo High on the southernmost perch of Columbia Heights. Which pretty much gave me a front-row seat to yesterday's strident scholastic showdown.

For a few days now I'd been seeing a fresh set of anti-Bush signs plastered around the neighborhood, the one featured at above left (and below right, and elsewhere). As I trudged up the hill on Thursday afternoon, I spied a troika of not-that-young activist-types plastering a few more to the utility box on the corner. I didn't give them much thought; after all, somebody must be posting these minor eyesores all about the place, and so it happened to be these folks. But by the time I got upstairs to my place, one of the lefty activist dudes was blowing into a megaphone, blaring that loud, tinny voice I almost invariably associate with Jake and Elwood's nemeses, the Illinois Nazis: "BLAH BLAH GENOCIDE BLAH BLAH MURDEROUS BLAH BLAH CONDI..." And over and over again: "BUSH! STEP! DOWN! ... BUSH! STEP! DOWN! ... BUSH... STEP... DOWN."

I considered yelling from up on the second-story that Bush couldn't actually hear him, but I've never been a very effective heckler (if I'm going to cut someone down to size, the written word is my weapon of choice). Normally I would just tune out this futile, amplified rant, and go about my day. Except this was happening directly below my apartment. So I did what came natural to a shy, retiring type such as myself — I grabbed my digital camera and plunged into the middle of the scene.

Cardozo is a minority-majority (majority-minority?) high school, nearly all the students African-American or Hispanic. Based on established voting patterns, I can see why this would be a wise place to commence indoctrination. But the trio of activists happened to be as pasty-skinned as yours truly. Not that this stopped Megaphone Man from slipping into what John McWhorter would call Black English. Not so fly, even for a white guy.

Meanwhile, his comrades passed out leaflets inviting the students down to the Lafayette Square outside the White House for a march on Saturday afternoon. It was kind of hard to gauge the students' actual level of interest. Megaphone Man got a few of the kids on record about whether they supported George W. Bush ("Hell no!"), but no one looked at the flyers after accepting them, and some of them ended up on the ground. But did they know — as I do after visiting the World Can't Wait website — that Al Sharpton will be there? And Doris "Granny D" Haddock? And best of all... Boots Riley? (Is he still famous?)

Soon enough the school police got involved, and not quite as soon, so did the District police. And that's about where my pictures start:


So here's Megaphone Man and Flyer Lady and a school police officer. I never got a picture of the third protester guy. I believe it was his job to protect the stack of green posters.


The protester-police powwow, with the adolescent audience above (That's right, I keep my skills sharp).


Before the whole thing was over I counted four police cars. For three non-violent protesters. Then again, this was all happening across the street from a police station.


Would you look at that — they're being shooed away from campus, and yet she's still handing out flyers! That's dedication, all right... but to what?

Although I spent five years at school in the self-professed anarchist capital of the world, I still have a hard time explaining what these people think they are accomplishing. If they really believe the present administration is comparable to the Third Reich, why then would Bushitler himself willingly give up power? ... I just wrote about two paragraphs on the subject, and then deleted them. I really don't care. You've got to be posting on Daily Kos at least before I give your politics a second thought.

P.S. — On Monday evening, Cindy Sheehan and Ramsey Clark held an event at a bookstore-restaurant-bar-hangout down the street from here, Busboys and Poets. Ms. Sheehan was just back from Venezuela, and I guess Mr. Clark had just returned from Baghdad, the site of his latest gig, legal counsel to Saddam Hussein. I guess you could say I let go of Eugene a long time ago, but Eugene won't let go of me.

P.S. — If I had to stake a guess on what explains modern hard-left activism, I suppose I would go with this. And this is worth reading, too.

SATURDAY UPDATE — If any Cardozo students did in fact show up for the Bush Step Down rally, they sure got rained on.

---

posted by WWB at 3:41 PM |