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June 11, 2007

Anti-Bush Protest in Rome

I'm going to be blogging way more Rome pictures in chronological order soon, but I thought it would be a good idea to stat with the anti-Bush protests since they're a "current event."

On Friday afternoon, Brent and I were looking for a nearby museum, just casually walking around the city, having lunch outside, etc. when we noticed a number of police officers gathering nearby:

We obviously had to investigate:

They seemed to be surrounding the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II which holds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier:

President Bush was scheduled to pay his respects to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that day, so of course there was a protest. If we had known this, we certainly wouldn't have stuck around, but of course we were getting our information from little bits and pieces of English overheard from other American tourists walking by who were all under the impression that we were gathering to watch Bush walk up the steps to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a photo-op I had no intention of missing.

Lots of police presence:

The monument:

Reflection in Brent's sunglasses:

Crowd of onlookers:

A wedding driving through:

A news photographer chatting up the Carabinieri:

I'd be so embarrassed to be on a Segway tour:

When these tank-like vehicles came in, I think we were all starting to get a little confused....

Especially this cute little tripod dog:

They certainly didn't make me nearly as nervous as this woman's neck:

More cops of various varieties filtering in:

Nice cutoffs:

Helmets on:

At this point, we were definitely getting a little confused about why the riot police were getting all geared up for a fight. All the onlookers were tourists with cameras who didn't want any trouble. That's when we discovered that we were trapped:

The city square that we were in had been completely blocked off by those tank-like vehicles and human walls of riot police with shields. That's never a good situation. We figured that if we were trapped anyway, we might as well get front and center for the best photo-ops:

Uh oh... starting to think something other than a quick in-and-out Bush visit might be going on:

There were 10,000 police officers there that day and close to 150,000 protesters (according to various news sources although the police say there weren't that many protesters).

Protesters arriving:

I thought the whole thing was absolutely hilarious.

More protesters:

The "Bush = Hitler" sign was a little crazy:

The riot police started using tear gas bombs:

Here's a video of one group of protesters playing the Darth Vader music from Star Wars for Bush. To me, this doesn't quite get their message across because probably about 90% of American guys would love nothing more than for their "theme music" to be that of Darth Vader:

This pink and yellow art project read "Push Bush Out":

Pirate flags? Darth Vader? What more could a guy ask for!

These lucky onlookers weren't trapped like the rest of us:

I guess they get them started young here in Rome:

This one said "God Smash America" which I thought was more than a little unfriendly:

The guy in front of this banner was masked and carrying Iraq's flag:

Finally we escaped and immediately went and got dinner at a little American bistro (certainly not called McDonalds or anything...) to re-Americanize ourselves.

Posted by lauren at June 11, 2007 08:57 AM

Comments

Posted by: brent at June 11, 2007 01:17 PM

Posted by: Jocelyn at June 11, 2007 01:53 PM

Posted by: G at June 11, 2007 03:36 PM

Posted by: Geoff at June 11, 2007 08:59 PM

Posted by: Alexis at June 12, 2007 03:30 AM

Posted by: Lauren at June 12, 2007 07:54 AM

Posted by: jocelyn at June 12, 2007 08:35 PM