Since Weekly Volcano editor Matt Driscoll first suckered me into covering the Washington State Legislature beat this session with the allure of an all-access press pass (journalistic crack to the layman) to the marble and granite Dome of Inequity and Ill-repute, I've been quietly witnessing several things I shouldn't. On-the-clock drunks in silk and tweed, sinful and disgusting eye-sex in the men's rooms by neocons, bloated old men openly groping their beautiful young counterparts of both genders as if they were in some twisted hooker salon in Bangkok smoking opium. Throngs of innocent young pragmatists bitten by the wants and desires of change working hard to get ahead in the lust-soaked Halls of Power, slowly evolving into the very failures that drove them to the job.
It can get a guy down sometimes. Good thing I have many beautiful, bright beings in my life with their bartending licenses and a sympathetic pouring hand.
Last week I bore witness to an unbearable sadness that was the Roe v. Wade 37th anniversary gathering. On the steps of the Legislative Building (the one with the dome) were scattered maybe 50 or so activists from the Interstate 5 corridor, representing mostly Sisters Organized in Solidarity, but there was a handful of Olympia notables there.
Resting off to the side with the seminal downtown sign-painter Ira Coyne, I thought about the rally just two short years ago. That year, our side, the people that like giving women a choice about what they want to do with their own body - cause it's theirs and not yours - had the steps of the Supreme Court across the way. The right-to-lifers (henceforth referred to in this column as un-patriotic tyrant control freaks forcing their religious persecution on people that have nothing to do with them in complete ironic contrast to the teachings of compassion and love from Jesus H. Christ, or haters for short) had bussed in hundreds, if not a thousand smiling, tan, healthy looking white-toothed grins waving around damning banners, forcing their children to hold signs they obviously were too young to read and comprehend, and flaunting the ever-sickening pictures of dismembered fetuses like it was a Fangoria convention. I had just moved back here from Oakland, for some ill-informed and stupid reason, thinking that life in Olympia would be better for me than the promises and golden copulations of California.
What a sucker.
Anyways, I had returned, and on the last-minute invitation of a friend's girlfriend, I decided to join them at the Capitol for the rally. After conferring with a friendly Free Radio Olympia DJ, I decided to take a boombox along for some live reporting and an impromptu dance party. We right to free-choicers are after all, a fun-loving, freewheeling, informed, often-testing and prophylactic-ly responsible bunch of sexually adventurous hooligans. We don't like to think of "doing it" as dirty, sinful, or shameful. It can actually be life-changing, spiritually affirming, a way to get closer to Jah and the oneness of the universe, and besides, it's really good exercise if you do it all the time. But the haters see it differently.
Manning the phone to do live interviews on the radio - broadcasting from the jambox - I was actually moved, inspired, and glad to be part of the thorn in the self-righteous side of the haters. Halfway through the rally, a couple dozen body-positive Olympia pranksters even streaked the rotunda lawn, to the dead silence of the much larger hater squad. Naturally our side erupted. All was right with the world, and I felt like making out right there with the next available pair of seductive lips. A well-done protest gets people hot and bothered; it stirs passions long hidden from the self; it makes you want to rise above the nonsense into a higher state of being. It's kind of like good sex.
Fast-forward two years. Frustrated lovers not talking in an angry bed, a limp procession of convoluted ideals and mixed messages straying way off point that presented itself to a lackluster, unhappy, and disillusioned American populace who didn't bother to show up in the first place. The haters took to the steps a few days before the anniversary, denying the energy of sparring ideals. What did happen was a downer - reminiscent of a horrible open mic night at a bar you never go to but have tried on the recommendation of a friend whose advice will now go unheeded.
What's even more perturbing perhaps was the show under the dome, just inside from the dying whimpers of the last few believers.
After Ira left, I felt lonely and out-of-place, and the "S.O.S. Security Volunteer" - an elderly woman in a red hat - was creeping me out a bit, nonchalantly hanging around trying to read over my shoulder as I sent tweets to Driscoll. She was either unimpressed or unable to read my press pass through her crooked bi-focals, which were probably bought 20 years ago with a Medicaid plan no doubt. The rally had disintegrated into story sharing about how long they had fought for justice, and how they were all getting screwed off of state-run healthcare by corporate fat cat insurance companies. By the time the Libertarian Socialist League of Lower Columbian Organic Chihuahua Breeders stepped up to read a solidarity letter from some comrade who couldn't make it, I felt like a stroll around the dome could, at least, net me a conversation with some friendly lobbyists or a good quote caught from a precisely tuned echo corner.
As I headed in, what sweet sounds caught my guero ears but mariachi! OYE 'MANO! Anyone who knows me knows I am impervious to all but two things: a dope drumbeat and "Nalgas Tradicional." I felt like I had walked into an alternate version of heaven's waiting room from a dream I'd yet to have.
The magical tones of Mariachi Wenatchee had quickly driven out the cold depression that seemed imminent. The ice around my heart was rapidly melting thanks to all the smiling brown faces milling about in awe and wonder.
(Full Disclosure: I lived in Arizona for a long time and the absolute lack of Mexicans anywhere in Western Washington but Lewis County greatly unnerves me.)
As I ascended to the third floor to snap pictures, a foul and terrible realization slammed into my brain - the icepack began to re-harden. What evil super genius in the event planning department thought to bring in mariachis on the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade during the Pro-Choicers assault on the front steps with a crappy megaphone? Probably the same evil super genius who did it on Armed Services Tabling Day when the hallways were packed with men and women in uniform handing out pamphlets and disabled veterans disturbed by all "beaners" (actual quote, it's unbelievable what white people assume about other white people). With the guarantee of citizenship to any illegal who signs up and completes military service in our country, it's a great unconscious tactic to employ when you have a building full of people who want to be Americans so badly they cross mountains, deserts and rivers with little or no provisions or belongings. And what better way to unnecessarily drown out a pathetic rally than with a 15-piece teenage mariachi band from our state's 12th district, drawing in hundreds of Mexican-American constituents and their kids, many of whom I guarantee entered our nation under shady and frightening circumstances we'll thankfully never have to face to pick fruits and vegetables, swab toilets, and do the rest of the crap work that unemployed Americans feel bigger than doing, all while sending the majority of their money back to Mexico to feed family while paying American taxes, buying cars and houses, and bolstering the economy working multiple jobs while being assailed by privileged, fat-assed, white talking heads on every available media outlet because they go to the free clinic when the ninos get sick.
I had to sit back and laugh, and just enjoy the vibrant, soul-saving music. It was another daily reminder of why I accepted this horrendous voyage into the political spectrum. What other profession gives you full access to psychological warfare, arrogant and unabashed classicism, and a front row ticket to the death of the Constitutionally protected right of free assembly as political weaponry in some twisted Pyrrhic autoerotic asphyxiation.
Jesus, I need a beer.