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How not to protest
A small group of people gathered at the Amherst Town Common Wednesday to protest the Bush administration. Entitled "Naked Anti-Bush Demonstration," the protest sought to enlist a raunchy pun in the service of dissent; organized by two Mount Holyoke students, the aim of the protest was to convince thirty people to get naked and lie down on the green together to spell out "No Bush." "People are outraged, especially the women are outraged, that their rights have been taken away from them by Christian fascists," said one of the organizers, adding that "Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule. Your government suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price."
After an hour of inspirational speechifying, the organizers urged the audience members to get naked and commit their bodies to spelling out their position on the current administration. Thirty naked people were needed to spell out "No Bush," but only sixteen were willing to disrobe in the chill Massachusetts air for their cause. The organizers adjusted, asking them to spell out "No W" with their bodies, but admonishing their naked human alphabet to be careful how they spread themselves across the grass: "Make sure you separate the 'o' and 'w' with enough space so that it doesn't spell out 'now,'" one of them advised.
The end result of the "Naked Anti-Bush Demonstration" may be seen here. Despite the organizers' warnings, the sixteen people nudely arrayed on Amherst Town Common look like they are spelling out the word "Now." As such, they appear either to be advocating for the National Organization of Women or, more simply, for the existential joys of living in the moment--no matter how cold that moment might be.
The "Naked Anti-Bush Demonstration" drew students from all of the Five Colleges. But it did not make a coherent point; indeed, it did not even succeed in making the incoherent point it had planned to make. The protest may, however, have succeeded in making its participants feel good about themselves, and perhaps that was really the point. Getting naked in public, in fifty degree weather, and then lying down on the ground with strangers to cooperatively spell out words may act as a metonymy for something like "stating their position" and "taking collective action." Certainly, the people who participated can say they did something. But if they think what they did counts as a substantive statement of anything besides their own self-absorption--their own misguided belief that their unclothed bodies are inherently powerful political statements--they are fooling themselves.
Posted by acta online on November 04, 2005 at November 4, 2005 08:46 PM
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