The "Bullshit Bush Express"

Good news for the electorally disgruntled: Organizers predict that thousands will show up in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20 to protest the inauguration of George W. Bush. And at least one of the hundreds of buses heading to the big bash will be from Detroit.

“The response has been great,” says Jerry Goldberg, an organizer for the International Action Center in Detroit. Goldberg says that at least one busload is rapidly filling, and that a second will be added if enough people sign up. Cost is $50, with the bus leaving Ann Arbor/Detroit on Friday evening, arriving in D.C. on the morning of the 20th, then turning around that night with people getting home Sunday morning.

To sign up, phone the local branch of the IAC at 313-831-0750.

According to Larry Holmes at the IAC’s national offices in New York City, hundreds of buses from the mid-Atlantic region are already chartered.

“I think this is going to be the biggest inaugural protest since Nixon’s second inauguration in 1973.”

What’s fueling the discontent? For starters, there’s the manner in which Bush ascended to the presidency, with a partisan Supreme Court handing him the job after thousands of Florida voters — particularly African-American voters — saw that their voices went unheard. But there’s more to it than that. The protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle and subsequent demonstrations against globalization are part of the mix, as are groups fighting everything from capital punishment and the burgeoning prison-industrial complex to military actions in Colombia and sanctions against Iraq.

“What we’re trying to do is let Mr. Bush know right from the onset that there is going to be a grassroots struggle against his reactionary administration,” explains Holmes. “As far as many of us are concerned, he is not the legitimate president. We’re going to tell him from the start that there’s not going to be any honeymoon.”

Along with the IAC (www.iacenter.org), which was founded in 1992 by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, information about the inaugural protest and other connections for local efforts to provide transportation can be found online at www.votermarch.org.