And the actual story...

Well, the protest on Friday went about as well as I could hope. The biggest problem was just that I should have checked the facts better because the Senate was on recess as of noon, which means there were no government people there (not that they would have seen us anyway), but also that there were no other protesters! That made it kind of awkward because my whole goal was to join with other people protesting! So suddenly I was all nervous that maybe we'd be in trouble for not having permits after all! I have to admit, I got sort of nervous the first time a police officer walked past us and also the first time one approached us!

Just as we were finishing up and about to leave, a police car came towards us and I ended up doing one of those annoying "are you waiting for me to cross the street so I need to hurry up and get out of your way or are you going and I should mosey back to the sidewalk before I get run over" dances, and they suddenly flashed their siren at me and told me that a different cop wanted to talk to me. Awkward. And scary. I admit that my heart was racing at this point. Anyway, the other officer told us that someone wanted to talk to us, and it turned out that an undercover cop for the Capitol Building wanted to just ask us who we were, if we were associated with any other groups, etc.

This new cop was super-polite and kept assuring us that we hadn't done anything wrong and that everything was fine. (I do wonder why she took our information? Something that I wouldn't even care about at all if it weren't for the freakiness of flag@whitehouse.gov...) Apparently you only need a permit if there are more than 15 of you, and since there were just six of us, we were fine. I should explain-- our group consisted of me, Natalie, two friends from church, and two older women who saw our signs and joined us right from the beginning; they were sisters who just RV all over the country and had decided to visit the Washington Monument since they'd missed it the last time they were in DC. But they figured they could spare some time for a good cause. People are fun!

Anyway, after we were done talking with the undercover lady, we headed back to the metro and home from there. While we were marching around, we had a lot of people give us thumbs up and say things like "Amen!" or "We're with you!" There were a few people who were rude. One woman muttered, "You guys are stupid" as she walked by us (times like that when I really wish I could advertise my master's degree-- I'm so vain about that), and another shouted, "You guys don't even know what socialism is! Freaks!" Natalie pointed out that she'd lived in a socialist country and had a pretty good idea what socialism was, as a matter of fact, but that person was long gone. Oh, well. And one person muttered something about ridiculous rich people-- that one sort of bothered me, because I am certainly not rich! It annoys me that people are making this out to be a bunch of unsympathetic rich people who don't want socialized health care!

There were also a few people who didn't necessarily agree with us who came and spoke with us-- they were very polite and respectful, as were we. One of these groups was a French couple, and Natalie was THRILLED to be able to explain our "cause" to them in French! All in all, we had more positive feedback than negative. I don't think that means much, though-- it's always easier to agree with a stranger than to disagree, so I imagine it would have been similar if I'd been campaigning for health care, too. But I guess I'll never know about that one! (And, of course, I'd like to think that the people who agree with me are more respectful, but there are probably jerks on either side of the fence!)

We also had several people take our picture. I can only assume that they were tourists who were excited to see real live protesters. Look at me, giving them the true DC experience! Yeah, I'm nice like that!

So that was my protest! I doubt it did a lot of good, but I was glad to be trying to do something, at least. Maybe it will get people thinking more, which would be a good enough outcome for me!

I also signed up to join the Tea Party March on September 12-- let me know if you want to come, too!