We Carried These Loosely-Woven, Rectangular Bags With Bi-Colored, Braided Sholder Straps And They Perfectly Accommodated Buttons

Somewhere, there's a picture of me, at 13 or 14, at my second protest march. I went w/ my dad and my sister, Lorraine, to protest the Viet Nam war. I had granny glasses, my hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, an Irish fisherman's sweater, and a wooden peace sign on a leather thong around my neck. I'm carrying one of those rectangular, woven bags that we all carried that year, with horoscope signs woven into the fabric, and long shoulder straps. I wish, tonight, that I could find it, for auld lang syne.

Today, I'm 51, a grandmother, a priestess, a lawyer, an ecofeminist, a witch, and a blogger, and I cabbed alone from my law firm over to demonstrate against this latest war. I wore an Hermes scarf and carried Michael Kors. I stopped at Capitol Grille on my way home and had oysters and a martini in honor of my dad, who taught me to exercise my right to "peacefully assemble."

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I was one of a thousand folks who showed up at the behest of MoveOn and VoteVets to support the Dems as they forced the Republicans to fillibuster an attempt to end the Iraq war. Yeah, it's gotten way more kabuki since I was a babe with a wooden peace sign.

I remember a third march against the Viet Nam war that I went to with my dad. That one, I think, was on the west (water, emotion, intuition, change, liminal spaces) side of the Capitol. Things had gotten more tense. There were policemen way up above us, with guns, walking back and forth. My dad pointed them out to me and told me not to forget this moment, when my own government turned its guns on me, when the government of Richard Nixon wanted to intimidate me. It was a seminal moment in my young life. My dad was granting me adult status, in a weird way. He wasn't convinced that they weren't going to open fire on us. And he was allowing me to stay there with him; he wasn't insisting that we leave right then. He knew, and I knew, that ending the Viet Nam war was the second most important work of my generation. He knew, and I knew, that if the war didn't end within a few months, my brother, Joe, was going to have to go to Canada. He knew, and I knew, that there are times when it's more important to remind them that we are many, they are few, than it is to protect yourself. I'm grateful for the lesson.

I thought of that night this evening.

With about a thousand others, I went to the east side (air, communication, thought, new beginnings, swords) of the Capitol. It was dark, and that gorgeous wedding cake of a building was illuminated. The statue on top was encased in wire. I invoked Hecate, Goddess of liminal spaces, to inhabit it. May this be a time of change, a time of new paths on the crossroads.

This time, the Capitol police made us all move off of the concrete onto the grass so that they could "perform security." The MoveOn organizers asked us to cooperate with them, to move away and let them bring in the drug-sniffing, bomb-sniffing, people-intimidating dogs. One of the Capitol policemen brought his dog over to sniff me and my Hermes scarf. I looked into his eyes and said, "Son. I'm a gradmother. I have a boy your age. Do I look like a terrorist?" He had the decency to blush and to say, "Sorry, Mam. Orders." Finally, the theatre was over and they let us resume our positions. (I use those words advisedly.)

The nice people from MoveOn and VoteVets must have sensed something, because they started in right away asking us not to hold our signs too high, not to block the path of the generator-powered kleig lights, to be very, very respectful. It's so different now from the sixties. People find each other with cell phones and blackberries. They take pictures with their cell phones and call thieir friends: "Do you hear that? I'm at a demonstration." The nice man walking around handing out information about a roundtable on impeachment gives you a computer disk instead of a mimeographed flyer. The speaker from VoteVets says, "I was too young to remember Viet Nam. I trusted my leaders." Fuck you, Sonny. Fuck you. Those who don't learn any history are condemended to repeat it. You think you're the first human with a penis to come home from a war and go "Fuck. They lied to me"????? Hint: You're not.

I digress.

Before Reid and Pelosi and Shumer and all the other Dems showed up, people were yelling "Impeach!" and "Bring the troops home NOW! Action, not talk." Reid stepped up to the podium and said, "Friends, give me your attention." A woman yelled out, "No. You give us your attention. Impeach!" Reid had to pause a moment and reorient himself. For the rest of the night, calls for impeachment continued to ring out. Pelosi had a difficult time delivering her remarks. The Senators and Congresscritters were obviously nonplussed. They'd shown up for a pep rally, expecting to be cheered. Every time that they said that Bush led the country to war based on lies, someone would yell out that they shouldn't have authorized the use of force in the first place. Every time that they complained about how we needed to be unified, someone would yell out that they needed to quit caving to the Republicans. Everytime that they mentioned how much Bush's war is costing, someone would yell out, "Quit funding the war!" Pelosi said that the problem with sending the bill to Bush over and over and over again (she's obviously heard the suggestion) was that the Repukes keep using parlimentary procedures to prevent that.

I've been -- on my own, with friends, with my brilliant Son and heroic D-i-L -- to lots of demonstratios since the ones that I went to with my dad. I've never been to a demonstration where we talked back like this. And, in the end, I thnk it was a good thing. MoveOn and VoteVets won't like it. The establishement Dems will be far less willing to show up for them since they can no longer deliver nice, supportive crowds. But I think that the Dems need to understand, as Carl Levin acknowledged, that the people are way out ahead of Congress and that Congress needs to hustle to keep up. We want an end to the Dems acting undisciplined. Don't tell me that you need nine Republicans when you can't get Liberman and Mary Landrieu and other Democrats to vote as they should. We want an end to this illegal, immoral war. If these Dems can't do it, the netroots can fund and elect, as Atrios says, more and better Dems.

Boxer got it. She said, "You've got a lot that you want to say, and I want to hear it." Mikulski got it. She said, "Tonight, we're voting to end the war. You know, and I know, that there are other votes that we need to have." John Lewis got it. Mendez got it. Barbara Lee got it. There were a lot of Dems who got it.

But there was a sea change tonight. Tonight was the night that the base spoke back. Tonight was a different kind of demonstration. I couldn't help but think that tonight was the night that the blogs stirred the pot. People in the crowd said, "Yeah, they'e been building permanent bases. The Dems aren't doing anything about that." They said, "We should never have picked 'I hate women's rights' Reid." They said, "Wake up, Pelois!" They said, "It's not enough to just stand there, Webb!" They said, "Here comes Fox News, Schumer."

Doods. We are in ur base, stirring up ur peeps. I am just saying.

Here's an early am toast to my dad. Fathers, take your daughters to a protest.