Among the Protesters
A loony-Left freak-a-palooza.

February 4, 2002 8:15 a.m.

hank heaven for dashed expectations. History did not repeat itself in New York City this weekend, and the expected trashing of Manhattan by anti-globalization anarchists did not happen.

Maybe the NYPD didn't give them any openings, or the anarchists simply lost their nerve. Whatever the case, the World Economic Forum goes into its final day Monday having sparked about 200 arrests, but no serious trouble of the sort seen in Genoa, Seattle, and elsewhere.

Peaceful though it was, the big protest has nevertheless been a loony-Left freak-a-palooza, a Michael Moore erotic dream, a pageant of political pathology and convocation of kookery peopled by folks as silly as they are ineffective. Which makes them no more unusual than the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, mind you, but at least the MLA doesn't take to the streets of a city mortally wounded in wartime to trash their country and its leader.

The World Economic Forum has been meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Park Avenue. Cold, rainy weather muted protests on Friday, but Saturday's cold, clear skies rallied the spirits of the faithful. It turned out the real action Saturday was taking place not outside the heavily guarded Waldorf one cross-town block east, on Lexington Avenue.

Thousands of protesters paraded down the street, following a pre-approved route that would end near the Waldorf. I stood behind metal barricades on 54th Street, cater-corner from the Citicorp tower, and watched.

Minutes after I arrived, a policeman asked a fat-faced young German spectator to move to another spot, because he was obstructing pedestrian traffic. Dieter blew the cop off. The cops asked the insolent twerp several times before an arrest threat made him move.

"Look at that," said Kevin Clark, a pinstriped businessman. "These cops ask these guys four times to move, and they want to argue."

I found a spot directly across from Citicorp, and stood out of the wind. Sooner or later, enthusiasts for every conceivable left-of-center cause passed by.

Anti-capitalism was the leitmotif of the day, but there were on hand Trotskyists, Maoists, feminists, vegetarians, animal-rightsers, AIDS activists, lesbians (lapel pin: "I'm a gay liberal vegetarian!"), pro-Palestinian enthusiasts, druggies, performance artists, Naderites, pacifists, the New York Men Against Sexism, and sundry hirsute rabble. As I reckoned it, 95 percent of the marchers were white, and well over half looked to be college age, and many were videotaping each other, no doubt for their senior thesis at Bennington.

Two elderly potheads ambled past, one of them a toothless female, holding up a sign calling for an end to marijuana "arrests and lies." A knot of grim-faced women, including a young one with a ribbonless Christmas wreath on her head, marched by holding up a green banner reading, "Patriarchal States Are Either Preparing For War or Recovering From War."

I wondered what would they make of the new Palestinian feminist icon, the chick suicide bomber. Every fifth person seemed to sport a badge reading, "We are all Palestinians," and one group chanted, "Red, Green, Black, White, Palestine is gonna fight." The self-described "Radical Women" sauntered past carrying a sign reading, "Peace Cannot Be Kept By Force. It Can Only Be Secured By Understanding." Mmm-hmm, and the U.S. military secured peace in Afghanistan by helping the dirt bags there understand how a Daisy cutter works.

Many of the marchers held up signs denouncing the current war and President Bush, some in extremely offensive ways involving phallic displays. One group stopped to perform a skit in which a man in a Bush mask choked to death on a "Pretzel of Truth." Some college students chanted profane insults to the commander-in-chief. It occurred to me that these protesters deserve nothing but contempt or indifference from their fellow Americans, carrying on so obscenely in a time of war.

Just then, who should I spot walking down the street wearing sunglasses, hipster gear, and a slightly nauseated expression but my old New York Post colleague Johanna Huden. She was one of the anthrax victims, her finger horribly infected by a poisoned letter. I couldn't believe she, of all people, was one of this mass of malcontents.

"Hey, I'm just trying to get to a needlepoint store on the other side of the street," she said. "I've got my pumps and my pink bag, and I'm afraid people are going to think I'm with them."

Johanna, who is not much older than most of the marchers, said she's always been liberal, but September 11 and its aftermath changed that.

"I saw the plane crash into the south tower," she said. "I was standing on the roof of my building and saw people falling to their deaths. And when you see them holding signs like, 'U.S. Out of Afghanistan,' it makes you sick. Most of these protesters probably aren't from here. They don't know what it was like. Look how young they are. They're living in some kind of liberal wonderland."

Johanna wandered off, and the tail end of the march finally arrived, trailed by about 20 police officers. I fell in with the ranks, and wended my way around the route, until the whole thing came to a standstill near the Waldorf. I was able to mingle, and overhear some great conversations, all along the lines of (this is an actual quote): "Duuuuudes, I agree with everything on your signs. I totally agree with that! You guys are totally right on!"

Later, I speak to a sweet-faced girl named Becky Johnson, 21, a Syracuse University student who has dyed her hair pink, and who came to the march in a frilly pink tutu. She told me she got into the movement after going to a "teach-in," and watching "a couple of really excellent films," and reading "a little Noam Chomsky, a little Howard Zinn."

"I educated myself about what's really going on in the world," she said, not a cloud of self-doubt crossing her face.

Up ahead, a gaggle of bearded young college students were pounding on buckets, and a middle-aged woman was ululating. It was a carnival-like atmosphere, though you could hear from time to time nasty comments being made about the police, who stood by impassively.

"I don't know why they're protesting the cops," an officer told me. "I'm not having dinner with those f — ks at the Waldorf. I'm just here to keep this from getting out of hand."

That cop's comment gets to the heart of why these marches alienate working-class people who might be otherwise open to questioning the agenda of the multinational elites meeting at the luxury hotel. If objecting to the globalists means standing shoulder-to-shoulder with pierced-and-tattooed ambisexual wackos yelling hate-America slogans and cursing the president, well, fuggedaboutit.

Plus, to spend five seconds in the company of these sanctimonious kids is to be rendered incapable of taking anything they say seriously. Three thousand people died not long ago a couple of miles away, and these ninnies are ready to smash windows and go to jail because somebody, somewhere, is being mean to puppies.

"These same people protesting Starbucks today were drinking coffee there yesterday in the rain," one cop said, smiling cynically. "Whaddaya gonna do?"

Sunday's protests were less organized and more violent, though only a few windows were smashed. The arrests totaled 154. Monday is the last day of the WEF, and police are on the lookout for anarchists to try to make trouble down by the New York Stock Exchange, which is mere blocks away from Ground Zero. This could get interesting yet.