The Wright Cause

One of the biggest questions leading up to Thursday is whether the January 20, 2005, inaugural protest will rival that of 2001. That’s when a crowd so vast, so vociferous, descended upon Pennsylvania Avenue to object to what they saw as George W.’s “stolen” presidency.

Ann Wright, who flew in to D.C. all the way from Honolulu, believes that the crowd will prove to be even bigger than the 500,000-strong of four years ago. I met Wright at the Code Pink demonstration this evening, and just had to take note of her. Wright is one of three U.S. diplomats who resigned from the State Department in March 2003 in protest of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. At the time, she’d spent more than three decades working as an ambassador (in Mongolia, then) She had lasted through six administrations before quitting on the Bushies.

Since the dramatic end to her career, Wright has been traveling the country speaking about the need for public debate and dissent in Bush’s America. Last fall, she attended 80 lectures and events in 17 states.

She couldn’t miss the inaugural protests. “Bush may have won the election,” she said, but people are still angry about the administration’s policies – the Iraqi war, Social Security, and the attack on civil liberties.

“I’m still very concerned with the direction Bush is taking.”