This Time, It's Personal

At London's recent anti-Bush protests, expats led the charge.

"Are you listening, Mr. Bush?" jeered a 6-foot placard, turned to face the passing side street, Downing Street, as its carrier and the surrounding 100,000-strong crowd swept down London’s avenue of power, Whitehall. No matter that Bush was adjusting his earplugs over at Buckingham Palace: During the president’s tidily private state visit to the U.K., the midweek protest organized by the Stop the War Coalition brought out an impressive gathering only occasionally touched by a sense of futility. Londoners had been promised a representative protest, by more than just anarchists and the bored. Beneath the placard, Bush and Blair grinned in caricature, their cartoon ears as wide as their smiles, yet already many had accepted they would not be listening.

To some, this might be discounted as just another protest on foreign soil. But the day proved that a significant number of Americans see no conflict between living abroad and speaking against the White House -- indeed, explicitly against Bush himself. Within the crowd that day were at least 100 members of Expats Against Bush, an organization that expressly channels opinion against the current U.S. president. Their placards echoed a sentiment seen at U.S. political rallies, and encapsulated the paradox that the organization’s founder believes many Americans abroad experience every day: "proud of my country; shamed by my president."

Expats Against Bush was founded by Luke Robinson, a tech professional now living in London. Over e-mail, he writes that his purpose "is to get progressive Americans abroad actively involved in the political process leading up to next year’s presidential elections." By taking a specifically anti-Bush stance -- chiming in with London’s protesters -- Expats Against Bush arguably sidesteps charges of fueling anti-American ire. "There are over six million Americans living outside the United States, the majority of whom are increasingly disenchanted with the Bush administration’s behavior -- especially in terms of foreign policy -- because we have to live with the consequences of that foreign policy on a daily basis."

Traditionally, expats have been regarded as having chosen to remove themselves from the domestic political life of the U.S. in favor of living and paying tax elsewhere. However, Expats Against Bush, with no official political affiliation, is maneuvering its way through international protests, preaching to expats, while having the inadvertent effect of influencing how foreign electorates regard their leaders. While Robinson, for example, is conciliatory toward Blair, seeing him "caught in a situation … [where] he had to toe the line and support Bush’s policies, no matter how shortsighted and arrogant they were," U.K. voters are enraged by Blair’s malleability, and are likely to ballot accordingly.

In perspective, the figure of six million is limited to expat residents, and doesn’t cover the tide of U.S. students who choose to study abroad. Eric, a student from Boston currently at Oxford University, believes that the decision taken by individuals to move abroad does reflect the current U.S. political landscape. "Personally, [the outcome of the 2004 election] will decide whether or not I move back to the States." Democrats Abroad, the international branch of the DNC, hopes to translate this attitude into Dubya-budging power: Its worldwide membership is recognized as a "state" with eight representatives on the Democratic National Committee, and will host a caucus in March to participate in selecting the Democratic presidential nominee.

So, rightly or wrongly, the international stage has become a place for some to fight out U.S. domestic issues and influence the selection of the U.S. leader -- far away, campaigners believe, from the eyes of the national media. For Robinson, the culmination of the day’s march marked a point at which Expats Against Bush bowed out: A gold statue of Bush was triumphantly toppled in Trafalgar Square, an act that Robinson says grabbed most of the protest’s media attention. "I distanced myself from the statue-toppling, and asked those in my group to do the same," he says. But doesn’t the choice to campaign amid a catch-all protest run the risk of muddling the movement’s anti-Bush message with an anti-American one? Robinson believes the news media doesn’t pick up on the distinction: "Unfortunately … flag-burning makes good television (it’s almost a stock protest shot now) and it’s certainly more interesting than shots of over 100,000 people marching peacefully [during the day] and displaying no anti-Americanism whatsoever."

If the march was well-mannered, it also was noticed by those in Whitehall, as officials twitched their office blinds to catch a look at Tony Blair’s disgruntled constituency. Perhaps too scrawled for them to read, one handwritten banner made it plain that, at least temporarily, the U.S. and U.K. protesters’ outlooks have become one. "Regime Change at Home," it demanded. When home is abroad and vice versa, it’s necessary to keep up the pressure in both.

Juliet Fletcher is City Paper’s food and listings editor -- and holds a British passport. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (850 words), contact Howard Altman, City Paper editor in chief, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., PA 19106 or e-mail altman@citypaper.net.

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