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Anti-Bush Rally in Texas Kicks Off
Nationwide Radical Revival

Published on Sunday, March 24, 2002 in The Nation
The Lollapalooza of the Left
by John Nichols

Singer Michelle Shocked strapped on her guitar and took the stage for the
performance that would finish the first stop on the Rolling Thunder
Down-Home Democracy Tour. Looking out at the faces of several thousand
cheering Texans, the woman who has penned hits such as "Anchorage" broke
into a huge grin and told the crowd, "We just didn't know what we were
going to find when we showed up this morning. We didn't know if you all
were going to show up. But I think it's been an unqualified success."

Shocked got no argument from the crowd, or from organizers of what may
well be the most unlikely scheme to stir the nation's populist sentiment
since someone suggested pulling together a protest outside the World
Trade Organization summit in Seattle.

Texas populist Jim Hightower's plan to "put the party back into politics"
with a rollicking national tour of speechifying, entertaining, organizing
and coalition-building along the lines of the 19th-century Chautauqua
gatherings had always been greeted with a measure of skepticism.
Hightower's friends and allies mumbled that the Lollapalooza of the Left
idea might be a hair too ambitious. Would it really be possible, at a
time when conservative President George W. Bush is supposed to be
enjoying 80 percent approval ratings, to pack a fairgrounds east of
Austin for a day of Bush-bashing, corporation-crunching, plutocrat-poking
politics with a punch? Hightower admitted that he worried about whether
he would prove right one of the best lines of Oklahoma populist Fred
Harris: "You can't have a mass movement without the masses."

But the organizers needed have worried. The masses were ready for this
movement.

"This is just what a lot of us have been waiting for -- the call to
action," said Cate Read, an airline industry analyst who watched from her
Houston office as employees from the nearby Enron building carried their
belongings out of the collapsed corporation's headquarters. "People are
ready to start making some noise about what's been going on in this
country. The media makes it sound like everyone's for everything George
W. Bush does and that is just not the case -- not even in Texas."

By the time filmmaker and author Michael Moore arrived at mid-day, to the
foot-stomping, fist-pumping and cheers of close to 7,000 rebels against
the consensus, this corner of Texas was definitely not Bush country.

"Where are we? In a barn?" Moore yelled over the roar of the crowd that
had packed into what was, indeed, the Travis County Exposition Center's
horse and hog showbarn. Clearly delighted, the most populist of popular
entertainers let rip with an assault on the suggestion that dissent is no
longer appropriate in post-September 11 America.

"Let me tell you something about the (president's) 80 percent approval
rating..." bellowed the author of the nation's No. 1 best-seller, "Stupid
White Men." "It's bullshit" came the yell from a fellow in a cowboy hat.
"That's right," responded Moore, "it's bullshit."

Echoing the slogan emblazoned on stickers many at the event wore, Moore
declared, "We are the majority in this country." For the last six months,
he argued, we've been told 'watch what you say,' 'don't dissent,' 'don't
question the leader.' Let me tell you something: There is nothing more
American than asking these questions."

If there was a theme for the day, it may well have been that dissent is
back in fashion. Hip-hop, Tejano, rhythm & blues and folk performers
including MC Overlord, Ruben Ramos, Marcia Ball and Shocked flavored
their shows with rebel yells, performance artists played the Enron
scandal for laughs, game booths allowed kids to toss a ball and knock
down a nuclear missile. Workshops took on everything from radioactive
waste to genetically-modified food, from militarism to racial profiling,
from corporate excess to the "selected-not-elected" presidency of a
former Austin resident named Bush. Columnist Molly Ivins got people all
worked up.

Everyone got into the act, even Doris "Granny D" Haddock, who walked
across the country at age 90 to raise the issue of campaign finance
reform and who, at 92, is madder than ever about special-interest
influence on government. "I have 16 great-grandchildren," she said, to
chants of "Go Granny D." "I want them brought up in a democracy, not a
fascist state -- which this country is fast becoming."

Between Granny D and Marcia Ball's rhythm and blues show, US Rep. Jesse
Jackson Jr., D-Ill, delivered the day's most passionate address. "We come
to this Chautauqua because Dr. King was right: America has issued a
promisory note and it has come back marked insufficient funds," boomed
Jackson, recalling the sudden shift in attitudes about federal spending
last fall. "On September 10, we were told there was not enough money for
Social Security. But on September 12 or thereabouts, there was $40
billion to find a cave man in Afghanistan -- and we haven't found him
yet."

To rising applause from an audience that stayed into the fast-cooling
Texas night to hear him, Jackson recounted the $95 billion in new
military and corporate-welfare spending that has been authorized since
the September 11 attacks.

"We come to this Chautuaqua because 53 million children trapped in
separate and not equal schools, and 45 million Americans without health
insurance, deserve the same (level of) national response that bin Laden
got," boomed Jackson, as he called for a restructuring of national
priorities that recognizes a need not just for security against attack
from abroad but also for security from hunger, illness and neglect at
home.

"My friends, I don't know how to make the Democratic party better and I
don't know how to make the Republican party better," Jackson concluded,
as tour organizers were already preparing for Chautauqua events in
Atlanta, Chicago, Pittsburgh and other cities. "So let us move forward
from this Chautauqua not to make the parties better but to make the union
better and more perfect for all."