THIS TIME WASHINGTON D.C.’s Pennsylvania Avenue was not closed for a celebration, but for a demonstration. It was scheduled to start at twelve-noon with the march starting on Capitol Hill and ending across the street from the White House in Lafayette Square.
By the time the first marchers who were holding upside-down U.S. flags reached the avenue’s intersection with Ninth Street, the student-marchers behind them packed the heart of the avenue including the sidewalks and they appeared to be one big slow-moving mass holding banners expressing their protest: “Who Elected Eli Jared?” “No More U.S. Nukes!” “U.S. Out of Everywhere.” “Wadsworth—Pawn of Jared.” “How Many Nukes Did You Use?” “No More Wars!” “It’s a Globe, Not an Empire.” “No More Money for Killing!” “U.S. Imperialism!” “Jared and Wadsworth = Hitler and Hitler.” And there were smaller banners saying “The Answer is the Answer Coalition.” Mixed in with those holding banners were others who were holding placards, some of them with a big diagonal slash on a red circle over the names of Wadsworth and Jared and other placards with pictures of Presidents Wadsworth and Jared with circular targets on their chests and “Impeach Wadsworth. Convict Jared” written beneath the pictures.
For seemingly no reason at all some of the demonstrators started beating at the doors of the Justice Department until the police came and escorted them back to the sidewalk and street and then demonstrators started doing the same thing to the Old Post Office Building and this time the police arrested maybe a dozen of them, taking them to police busses lined on 12th Street.
The demonstration was restored to some kind of order, with the demonstrators resorting to yelling a statement with question and answer chants:
“Impeach Wadsworth!”
“When do we want him impeached?”
“Now!”
“Convict Jared!”
“When do we want him convicted?”
“Yesterday!”
They kept it up as they made the turn north up 15th Street where Pennsylvania came to its temporary halt, then they turned left to where the rest of Pennsylvania Avenue continued toward the White House.
When they arrived near East Executive Avenue to the margin of the White House compound, the chants became louder with the demonstrators behind the first rows starting to push the people up front so they would move faster, then everyone behind them seemed to push the people ahead of them, the demonstration turning quickly into a near-riot. Some tried to get to the White House fence.
It didn’t last long. Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, was not an empty park waiting for demonstrators. For hours it had been filled with waiting police who now formed themselves into a human wall coming toward them. The demonstrators started throwing stones at the police and yelling obscenities at them preceded by the call of “Wadsworth’s Storm Troopers!”
After one policeman was felled by a rock that hit its target, the police became more than a human wall, bathing the demonstrators in tear-gas. They ran away from the police in all directions and went throughout the city, turning D.C. into a city of anarchy.
What saved the District of Columbia was an afternoon thunder-shower. Demonstrators traditionally despise rain, and these demonstrators were no exception.
That night when the rain was done, they congregated in West Potomac Park where television reporters went from one demonstrator to another for interviews for their evening newscasts. There was no shortage of those who wanted to give their words of protest on television but it became quickly apparent to the interviewers that the interviewees were very young and not able to articulate why they were there. Some of them, both boys and girls, were able to cry when they talked about what they called U.S. imperialism. Outside of that, the television newscasts concentrated on earlier tapes of the demonstration as a whole, rather than individuals.
The obvious question was ‘why are you here today?’ The answer became apparent only after the television crews left. That was when West Potomac Park became a giant bed with sleeping-bags filled with two or more people in them. The tear-gas that permeated the air earlier was now replaced with an acrid odor that, other than to the ones who created it, was not even as tolerable as the earlier sharpness of the tear-gas.
It didn’t take long for much of the nation to readjust itself back to the joys, the goodness, and the faults of what was normality.