Plans for the Situational Tour

I would have loved to go to the IRS protest, but I slept through my alarm. Then I planned to go to the The World Can't Wait protest in Layfette Park. I had heard they were going to demonstrate waterboarding right in front of the White House.

As fate would have it, I stepped out of the Farragut North metro station into a full fledged student protest. Sorry World Can't Wait. This was where I wanted to be for my situational tour.

I spent the afternoon with SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. When I first saw them, they were to dancing to great music around a circle of student desks in the middle of Washington circle. Eventually we moved down K street and stopped to protest in front of an Army Recruiting Center.
The map below shows where we were:

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Students for a Democratic Society started in the 1960s by college students protesting the Vietnam War. It was exciting to participate in this protest because I felt I was finally part of the "Student Protest" ritual. Growing up, my parents and friends spoke reverently of "the 60s". On March 19th, I actually participated in this democratic ritual.

1960s ideology played heavily in my protest experience. It was pouring rain and people were "just going with it", shouting things like "DROP BEATS NOT BOMBS!" and "Tell us what democracy looks like: THIS is what democracy looks like" The protestors rallied behind the nonviolent ideology. When someone in the crowd threw a stick at the Army Recruiting Center windows, for example, the protestors BOOED. Shaming the thrower, proved that the students were lucid and "Those crazy kids".
I grinned and threw the peace sign in the air.

I forgot to mention that what assailed me first when I stepped out of the metro was the shriek of police sirens. Security forces surrounded the protestors on all sides. The security actually seemed happy to be out in the pouring rain watching kids dance and shout. They wanted to know where we came from, when we were moving on to a new location. They roped us off with yellow caution tape. The security was ready for crazy shenanigans. When we didn't oblige, a relative peace settled between us and them.

This peace broke, however, outside the Army Recruiting Center. A student in a soaking blue suit shouted "We don't want to die for you anymore!" at the employees looking down at us. Tension escalated.
A very short police officer began yelling at us through a megaphone. (Why is it that short men seem to revel in positions of authority?)Anyway, the short police officer told we had to move on. Our numbers and anger ate away at the short man's authority. But the line of policemen with billy clubs advancing slowly down the sidewalk grabbed our attention. The stone-faced police officers herded us down the sidewalk shoving people in streets back up onto the curb so they couldn't block traffic.