In the middle of Ohio, on a Greyhound Bus traveling back to Saint Louis, I get an estatic call from Adam telling me about his press conference hijinks and asking me if I was at home so I could record the footage of him that was all over the television. I was saddened to tell him I was over a 1,000 miles away from my computer. Not less than 15 minutes later I get a call from my friend Jack, a reporter from NPR, telling me that Adam was all over the news. It totally made my day! My friend, who got more votes than Bush in Washington, DC, all over the news, again :) The article below is probably the best yet!<\/p>\n
Read Article:
\n<\/p>\n
\nWashington City Paper
\nCheap Seats
\nFrom the December 10, 2004 issue.
\nArrested Developments
\nBy Dave McKenna<\/p>\nAdam Eidinger isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a sportsman. His only athletic claim to fame, until recently, was being Curtis Martin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s study partner in an SAT preparatory course when both attended Pittsburgh\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Taylor Allderdice High School.<\/p>\n
Martin, the school\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s superstar running back, grew up to be a professional football player. Eidinger, student-body president of its class of 1992, grew up to be, well, a professional pain in the ass.<\/p>\n
But for all his adolescent bookishness, Eidinger has been all over Sports Illustrated\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pages and ESPN screens lately. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the guy who was wrestled away from the podium at Union Station shouting anti-stadium slogans and waving a big sign (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Stop the $614 Million Giveaway!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) during the new baseball team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s naming-announcement press conference a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n
He promises he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t show up at the event intending to make much of a fuss, let alone grapple with baseball publicist Charlie Brotman, D.C. Councilmember Harold Brazil, and the cops on his way out the door. But then organizers hung a pitch over the middle of the plate, so Eidinger swung for the fences.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was just going to bring a sign,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Eidinger says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But everybody was just standing around, and then I saw the microphone, and nobody was using it. I figured I might as well use it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Brotman, as a former publicist for ring giants Sugar Ray Leonard, Don King, and Bob Arum, has seen his share of press conferences turn into melees. But he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never found himself in the middle of such a scrum before his bout with Eidinger. And though the flack in him appreciates the publicity garnered by the event, Brotman says he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not going to invite Eidinger to RFK to throw out the first punch when the Washington Nationals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 season commences.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think I got away with a draw, and now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m retiring,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Brotman, the septuagenarian who already has a poster of the Union Station brouhaha in his office. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not going to be a rematch.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Eidinger\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s antics made essentially every newspaper and news channel in this country. But he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stick around to enjoy the notoriety that came with so publicly peeing on baseball\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parade. Hours after being interrogated by police and let go\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0153They have two years to press charges, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been nothing yet,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says\u00e2\u20ac\u201dEidinger got on a plane with his wife and infant daughter and flew to Paris.<\/p>\n
The European trip was a long-planned outing built around his great-uncle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being honored, along with other U.S. servicemen, by the French government for helping to liberate France from Nazi occupiers during World War II.<\/p>\n
But as soon as he returned to our shores a week later, Eidinger learned about the fuss. And loved it.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh my god, the response has been unbelievable,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hearing from all over the world about this, really. Friends from the West Coast who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even care about the East Coast are telling me they saw me on their local news. Some old friends are telling me I looked fat, but everybody loved it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Eidinger knows he wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fare well against, say, his old classmate Martin or any other athlete of that ilk in a physical confrontation. But in today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s America, being a thorn in the establishment\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s side, as Eidinger so clearly is, requires as least as much intestinal fortitude as it does to strap on a football helmet for a living. His tirades, showboaty as they are\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nicknamed \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Red Light Eidinger\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by some D.C. journalists for knowing when TV cameras are rolling\u00e2\u20ac\u201dallow less courageous folks to stay off the Man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s radar.<\/p>\n
An active Green Party promoter and occasional candidate for public office, Eidinger had his home visited by the Metropolitan Police Department while planning protests against the World Trade Organization in the spring of 2000. Yet he still flaunts his role in organizing those demonstrations, as well as the gathering against George W. Bush that made a charade of the Inauguration Day parade along Pennsylvania Avenue in 2001. And he promises to strike an even bigger blow against the empire come Jan. 20, 2005.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nobody except the people who were there knew how successful that inauguration protest was until Michael Moore put it in his movie,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Eidinger, who always makes a point of advocating nonviolence. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to turn it into a drag race down Pennsylvania Avenue again next time.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flown D.C. flags made entirely of hemp to call attention to the District\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lack of statehood. And he was jailed last year for showing up at Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office and refusing to leave, to promote the same issue.<\/p>\n
But his turn at bat at Union Station got him more attention than any of his more righteous efforts.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Of all the events I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever been a part of, no single act has ever gotten this much attention,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My wife told me it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the best protest of my life.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
He sees the grandstand he took at Union Station as being very consistent with his previous protests, particularly the anti-WTO efforts.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I look forward to going to Opening Day at RFK,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t about baseball. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all about protesting corporate greed. I really see this fight as an extension of the globalization fight. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about private interests abusing the public. This stadium is a corporate subsidy. As a citizen who cares, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to see this shoved down our throats on the backs of a lame-duck city council. Protest was never supposed to be something sedentary, something that had to be cleared by the government. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned that one person being disruptive will be more effective than 100,000 people showing up in some orderly sort of march. People need confrontation, they need drama, or the issue will be ignored. I expressed through physical direct action the feelings of millions of Americans: that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re being railroaded by these sports millionaires.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Eidinger put together a tape of TV clips of the Union Station throwdown and brought it to Pittsburgh last weekend for a large family gathering celebrating Hanukkah. While wearing his brand-new licensed Nationals baseball cap\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcomplete with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No Taxes for Baseball\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Magic-Markered on the brim\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhe previewed his greatest-hits compilation for his kin.<\/p>\n
All his relatives, even the sports nuts and the right-wingers who have long tagged him as the family\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Commie,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d laughed at his antics, and came away fully in support of the efforts to stop the stadium deal.<\/p>\n
Better yet, they gave him gifts that could be used in future forays into civil disobedience.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I got a nice video camera,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think my family wants me to use it to film the baby. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be handy at protests.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201dDave McKenna\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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