TAKIN’ IT TO THE STREETS Picketers hit Highway 2 over Walmart issue January 30, 2011
MPAC protesters at Hy 2 & kelsey St. in Monroe Jan 29, 2011. Chronicle photo. CLICK TO ENLARGE
MPAC protesters at Hy 2 & kelsey St. in Monroe Jan 29, 2011. Chronicle photo. CLICK TO ENLARGE
MPAC protesters at Hy 2 & kelsey St. in Monroe Jan 29, 2011. Chronicle photo. CLICK TO ENLARGE
MPAC protesters at Hy 2 & kelsey St. in Monroe Jan 29, 2011. Chronicle photo. CLICK TO ENLARGE
MPAC protesters at Hy 2 & kelsey St. in Monroe Jan 29, 2011. Chronicle photo. CLICK TO ENLARGE
(MONROE, WA) -- Street theater with sticks and cardboard. Oh sure, it’s a concept as quaint and antiquated as black and white TV, politicians with manners and family wage jobs. But then you could say the same about gambling joints, strip clubs and honky-tonks and they still draw a crowd and do just fine.
By and large Americans are reluctant to go about fixing things when they ain’t broke.
And so it was that the Monroe Preservation Action Committee (MPAC) took their beef – all lathered up in almost old time religion street theater - to the very streets in the mighty Sky Valley Saturday morning Jan. 29 they claim will go to hell in a hoo-doo basket should Walmart build a way-big store just a few hundred feet from where they were standing. And smiling. And waving signs.
MPAC members and distinguished guests – some 42 people strong by 10:45 a.m. on all four corners of U.S. Highway 2 at Kelsey Street in Monroe – showed up at 10 in the morning with anti-Walmart signs waving in a steady northwest drizzle under patented gray skies. More may have showed up later.
Babies and kids were in tow to boot.
By and large if folks show up in the rain in the winter with picket signs and younguns in tow on their day off (and it’s not a union strike) it generally suggests they are some kind of serious.
Shows of force and street theater gigs are what folks do when they want to get your attention. Think of the idea behind it as shock and awe but without tracers, night vision goggles and guys with steely eyes, flat bellies and bad intentions.
And get attention they did.
EYEBALLS AND MORE EYEBALLS
More than likely thousands of vehicles and who knows how many eyeballs passed by that corner while they were there and saw the signs and got the messages.
Messages like “No Walmart in Monroe”, “Support Local Business,” “Keep our dough in Monroe,” “Nobody Asked Us,” “You think traffic is bad now?” and the big red cherry on top of that ice cream sundae, which read “10,000 more cars per day in Monroe!”
Oddly perhaps, there did not appear to be any large business owner contingent among the picketers or even union types; odd only when one considers that part of the reason the protesters were there was to save their bacon --their jobs, businesses, incomes and careers.
Perhaps after it’s all over and if the coast is clear and if things have settled to their way of liking, they will send picketers discount coupons for Christmas shopping.
The Monroe Chamber of Commerce was also not observed in any observable force; that would perhaps be curious in that some or even many of the chamber’s long time dues paying members may be ground down into a street fight/survival mode in the not so far off future.
But for many drivers on Saturday it was perhaps that one thought expressed in that one sign (“10,000 more cars per day in Monroe!”) that was the most important. Not jobs or careers or who should keep their local business running.
That one sign could make strong women and fearless men weak in the knees and prone to fainting spells if they have to get in a rig and travel U.S. Highway 2 around Monroe many days of the week around commute time or on summer weekends or when the Monroe fair is underway.
One picketer told an observer she was there because she doesn't want any more of a traffic nightmare on Highway 2 than already exists; that she and her husband moved out here to the valley to get away from that stuff.
Oh. And watch out you merchants in the quaint Bavarian village of Leavenworth (says MPAC) if Highway 2 does go to hoo-doo in a hand basket and rolls to near-gridlock on weekends because then you'll be selling most of those German looking trinkets made in China to yourselves.
Many drivers seemed to sympathize with the cause. During the 45 minutes a member of the oft-maligned American news media was on hand to observe, many drivers honked their horns and waved arms and hands as if to signify a thumbs-up, okay-by-me-thing.
NO BRONX CHEERS AT LEAST EARLY ON
And although it may have happened later, during the time one news media type was on hand he did not observe any drivers or passengers in passing vehicles administer to any protestor the infamous “Bronx cheer” - a raised middle appendage on a bare or gloved hand indicating that the recipient of the greeting should go and do something the recipient most certainly (well, in most cases) does not do.
Things were observed to be civil during that 45-minute time frame. No screaming, no death panels, no fistfights.
In fact, it seemed almost a festive thing between the observers and the observed.
That fact may not bode well for the careers of some city hall types come election time. Part of the street theater on Saturday was designed to get the attention of city hall – yet again.
There appears to some observers of this scene there's a growing body of the great unwashed now of the opinion they were left in the dark by the powers-that-be about the Walmart march to the sea while the march was in the early phases at least.
The street theater on Saturday was yet another sharp snap of the fingers, another wake up call perhaps to Monroe Mayor Bob Zimmerman and the rest that they may have misjudged the terrain; may have awoken a sleeping giant with this city hall-Sabey-Walmart land deal (that now many folks think stinks to high heaven).
It is, according to those who are going over it line by line, an interesting deal with arguably murky sidebars; a deal that in news coverage has curiously all but been ignored by the large Seattle TV stations who love to go investigative-reporting under seats in the state ferry system and into house rental schemes, weight reduction devices and $10 electronic toys that are supposed to make your dog stop barking.
As things are shaping up, it appears to some that there may be a few in the halls of power in Monroe who perhaps thought – or at least imagined on a good day - the whole package was going to slide down the gullets of locals and near locals alike sweet, easy, quick and without need for a chaser.
