More Goofy Stunts Planned for Inauguration Day

If it makes you feel better, go ahead and do your shopping a day later.

Did you know that 200,000 more Massachusetts voters picked Bush in 2004 over 2000? That's something you don't hear about often, do you?


(Boston Globe) While Republicans in Washington will be busy hanging bunting and straightening the final touches on the president's second inauguration Thursday, Jesse Gordon of Cambridge will be taking another, less festive action.

Gordon will turn the pockets on his pants inside out. No, the 44-year-old Internet marketing manager for a chemistry company is not flat broke. Nor is he attempting to advance a new hobo chic.

Gordon will be taking part in what he and other activists hope will be a day of protests across the nation designed to dampen the spirit of the quadrennial ritual and register a broad, if quiet, displeasure with the man about to be sworn in for a second term.

"The real goal is not so much to force a change in policy right now," said Gordon, who named the lack of debate about White House policy in Iraq as his number one grievance. "We need an open debate."

Gordon's protest is part of an economic boycott, called Not One Damn Dime, that will attempt to enlist thousands of like-minded citizens from Massachusetts and beyond to halt all purchases on inauguration day.

Gordon says he has 10,000 people signed up through the group's website who have agreed to not spend any money Thursday. He hopes they'll all spend the day with their pockets turned out to make the protest visible, Gordon said.

"It's a way of making a statement on that day," said Monica Boyce, 38, a scientist from the Central Massachusetts town of Wales, who has agreed to move her Thursday shopping to another day. "Our policy in Iraq is really tied to all this. It is really driven by big business interests and certainly not by weapons of mass destruction."