George W. Bush's motorcade lurched through the largest inaugural protests since Richard Nixon's era, enduring thousands of protesters who hurled insults at the newly installed president. Some threw bottles, tomatoes and an egg and one demonstrator burned an American flag atop a lamppost.
Police ordered the motorcade to slow in anticipation of some protests -- at one point stopping it for five minutes -- and then sped it through others.
PHOTO: REUTERS
A couple of protesters threw bottles and tomatoes before the presidential limousine arrived, and one hurled an egg that landed near the motorcade, the Secret Service said.
PHOTO: AFP
But the protesters managed little else to interrupt the festivities in the face of a massive show of 7,000 police officers. As the day grew darker and colder, authorities had arrested only eight people and activists began to disperse, said Terrance Gainer, executive assistant chief of police. One of them was charged with assault with a deadly weapon after slashing tires and trying to assault an officer, Gainer said.
"Hail to the Thief," read one sign along the parade route questioning the legitimacy of Bush's election win in Florida. Other protesters sported buttons declaring, "illegitimate Son of a Bush."
"If he had won clearly, I wouldn't have troubled to come here," said Mack Wilder, a construction worker from Greensboro, North Carolina, who joined over 100 others from the state for a five-hour bus journey through fog and rain.
Some said the deeply conservative tinge of Bush's Cabinet drove them into the streets. "By having people like [John] Ashcroft nominated, he is definitely not being a healer, which is what he promised to be," said Barbara Katz.
There were also inaugural day protests around the country. Some of the largest were in California, where demonstrators outside the Capitol sang "George Bush Ain't My President." Protesters in Seattle gathered around a flower-covered cardboard coffin labeled "Ballot Box." There were also demonstrations in Florida, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Vermont.
Bush remained in his limousine for most of the traditional parade route up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House.
The new president finally exited for a brief walk only after he reached a secure zone near the White House filled with inauguration ticketholders and no protesters.
The protests were the largest since those during Nixon's 1973 inauguration at the height of the Vietnam war. Those protests drew about 60,000; organizers of the Bush protests anticipated 20,000.
Though protesters had many disparate causes, most said they were motivated by the Florida election controversy.
Bob Rogers, one of the organizers of the "Voter March," said the fact that Bush captured the White House even though Al Gore won the popular vote by 500,000 guaranteed busloads of demonstrators.
"These are moderate, working people, motivated by anger, embarrassment, that kind of sentiment," he said. "They're wondering, `We put a man on the moon, why can't we count the vote?'"
On the Capitol steps where he was sworn in, Bush exchanged smiles and pleasantries with Al Gore -- a civility that at times extended into the streets. Pro- and anti-Bush protesters joked with each other, and jostled each other on crowded subway trains.
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