All photos by Holly Le
Tens of thousands of people gathered at the National Mall on a drizzly day to celebrate the day after the day that changed everything. At least, that’s what brought Fox News broadcaster and Republican Party opinion leader Glenn Beck to the District. Beck organized this year’s 9/12 Project, a campaign to return the nation to the mindset it held the day after the attacks on September 11, 2001. For his first annual 9/12 convention, he brought the campaign to Washington, D.C., a city that had a really great day on the day after 9/11. The Web site reveals that there are 9 principles and 12 values associated with the 9/12 Project, but doesn’t share them. It does explain, “Any time you mention the words Marxism or communism, the left paints you as some sort of nutjob, a McCarthyite.”
Judging by the number of signs labeling President Barack Obama a fascist, Communist, socialist, and czar, these rallygoers weren’t afraid of being called nutjobs. Most of the protesters were sweet, polite Midwestern types hailing from distant Zip codes. One lady named Linda drove from Sugarland, TX, to Kansas City, MO, to pick up here sister (Twila), stopping only once for chili outside Cincinnati on the drive to the District. “We’re ready to see this regime fall,” she told me.
For an angry mob, the protesters were largely polite: crossing streets carefully, queuing up in long lines for water and hot dogs, smiling helpfully for pictures, pledging hand over heart for every patriotic number blaring from the Capitol PA. The line for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian was several dozen people deep, suggesting that many protesters thought 9/12 was an occasion for some sightseeing.
There’s an irony to a white family of four carrying “Don’t Tread on Me” flags into the American Indian museum that seemed lost on the protesters. You’d think that overwhelmingly white protesters, largely united by their shared antipathy for the nation’s black president, would think twice about the message broadcast by a Confederate flag. Being from the South myself, I’m well aware that Confederate sympathizers — who are self-declared opponents of the United States of America — believe the flag stands for Rebel pride, Southern culture, and states’ rights. That’s not the way people outside the CSA see it, though; to a great many people, it is a symbol of hatred. The Don’t Tread on the Stars and Bars mashup flag is clever, but it sends a message that contradicts the conservative mantra that issues, not race, motivates the opposition.
States’ rights (or racism) was just one of a dizzying number of issues on hand. Truthers and Birthers represented fringe elements that were difficult to distinguish from the mainstream opponents of health care and Obamination. Anti-abortion protesters marched with enemies of the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Libertarians and teabaggers probably share some politics, but it’s difficult to see how such a diversity of political agendas fits in with the notion of national unity that 9/12 supposedly represents.
Finally, there were the Obama/Joker signs. Anyone want to take a stab at what those mean? The only political message that’s more cryptic involves cheese in a mouse trap. This had something to do with Nancy Pelosi and the looming fascist crackdown that will follow from health care reform — but it reads to me like whale cake.
