They were here all along, but media were out to lunch.
On August 29, 2004, for instance, when nearly half a million people marched through the streets of Manhattan to protest the Republican National Convention, a reporter from the Washington Post called it "the most boring protest I’d ever covered.... a bunch of middle-aged white people walking up the street." Photographs and videos show all ages and colors (middle-aged "white" people, too) in T-shirts bursting with fighting, funny, furious protest, yet NOT ONE of our major "news" magazines showed a single photo of the event.
Then came the next election, and on November 10, 2006, NY Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote: "The great revulsion has arrived. Mr. Bush’s reign of error" may have "self-destructed" in a "truly stunning victory for the Democrats."
If media had been paying attention, they might not have been so stunned. Fortunately, one independent photographer had been following that body copy – and its expletive-undeleted variations – then put 260 historic photos in an historic book, further illuminated by her own passionate, witty, tough-and-tender text. Today, [Read My T-shirt] for President... a true history of the political front and back, draws laughter and cheers from around the world.
Author/photographer Judy Seigel sees the project as a service to history. But, she adds, "the T-shirts made me do it."
(front cover)
The story is told in many gripping installments, such as, "Desperately Seeking Republican T-shirts," "The Two Dirty Words of 2004," "The Abortion Wars," and "Dumb and Dumber in the Semi-Wild West." The text amplifies and enhances the very free speech on these fronts and backs — all of it witty, explicit and unkind. (See also [ (Very) free speech [back cover] ])
[Back to top of page]
"Ring of Truth: Word from the Zines", starting page 183, is first-person testimony to the shocking — and dramatic — pre-emptive arrests by NYC police during convention demonstrations. Reports of the FBI and the American Civil Liberties Union cooperating to investigate "police crimes" and evidence tampering that continued to emerge well into 2006 fill five pages of an appendix titled "Police Vs the Protesters: Enter the FBI."
Colorful asides, reports and commentary appear throughout, but the author's most heartfelt "aside" may be her salute to "the hundreds of thousands of Americans who took the time, trouble, and, if they too believed the 'cable yackers,' risk, to travel to a hectic, expensive city on their own dime, walk hours in the hot sun, being hassled, herded, even locked up in hellacious conditions by perfidious police, while the press in its air-conditioned fortress or all-expenses-paid hotel rooms not only failed to leap to their defense, but in at least one case called them "boring," and worse yet, "middle-aged" and " white"! [page 106]
[Back to top of page]