Sunday morning the sun glows bright green through the leaves of the quince outside the bedroom window. The warm breeze coming through the front windows soothes the tension I feel at the thought of the crowds and loudness at the demonstration. I drink my coffee. My own paper life is a shambles, my political life a story that some time ago entered an uncomfortably empty Middle Period, and so these things don't seem the same to me that they did fifteen years ago. But the bus comes on time and it's not too crowded.
The first people we see are bored-looking bicycle cops, standing over their machines in a long line. Beyond the cops are a crowd of anarchists– or so they call themselves– carrying red flags and selling t-shirts under the statue of Lincoln. They're smiling and larking. The great bronze president gazes impassively down on the children of his republic. Beyond these and to the north is a red and white crowd, clumping finally around a sandstone fountain at that end of the South Park Blocks.
A woman down there is shouting through a bullhorn, about anti-abortion legislation. It's so loud that by the time I'm a hundred yards away my ears are hurting. The anger that is missing from the crowd is all reserved for the bullhorn, and it is the type that is turned on and off judiciously, like water in a drought. What the crowd takes to be the vehemence of conviction is more the desperation of a speaker who's losing her audience, sustained and distilled into a sort of public-speaking chant. Because the crowd does not need to be convinced. The mood is one of fervent, almost anxious agreement. And the speaker knows all this. She begins chanting for real, waiting for a response from the crowd that eventually comes, but muted and scattered.
Dotting the crowd are red balloons, brought by the ever-present Wobblies. Many of their intended audience stroll along as pairs and individuals, with beatific smiles on their faces. Those who are unconvinced remain so and walk through the crowd a bit offbeat, to make it obvious they have somewhere else to go. I do this too. Canvassers and socialist workers hurry through the crowd with their clipboards and pamphlets like waiters at a cocktail party. The few trade and industrial union workers we could find– and we looked for them, up and down the crowd– seem to be waiting for something: their turn at the mike? Someone to ask them about their union? Someone to start an argument? It is hard to say. We found only two banners: one for the AFL-CIO, and one for the Painters. The only other two signs we found were a SEIU t-shirt and a sign that said "Fred Meyer Settle The Dalles". It looked like a sign from the big Fred Meyer strike back in the '90s, so I assume the UFCW printed it. The sign, of course, is stuck into the ground.
Eventually the shrieking bullhorn drives everything out of my head and I decide to walk towards the Federal Building. A pair of Tea Party workers walk by with chunky, expensive cameras around their necks. Even this glimmer of confrontation has a dreary regularity: after all, everyone must be represented.
At the site of the Federal Building we find another disappointment: the Federal Building has been gutted, a project of the GSA that will ultimately "modernize" the building. It is all far beyond me; the building was an immense tower of white stone and black glass and seemed in no urgent need of "modernization". Now it is an ugly skeleton of rusting girders covered with what appears to be dirty shaving cream. The listing I found for the U.S. Government Book Store, the real object of my search, is a deserted-looking office with a Providence Health Care sign in the window.
We make our way to the Plaza blocks. The Spanish-American War infantryman still advances with a grim look on his face. A slight breeze dances through the ferns on a great limb of elm. Celeste is disappointed and surprised; I am just disappointed. I did not really expect to see the big-bellied trade union guys, a bit dazed but finding their rhythm in front of the mike, warming to tales of the United Auto Workers in Michigan in the '30s... Radicalized in spite of themselves by this shrill anti-labor reaction that endlessly strives to out-shout its bullhorn counterpart... Suddenly formidable again, aware of their own strength again.... I did not really expect all this... Did I?
No, no.
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