Civil disobedience has changed

If all goes as planned, President Bush will be in Spokane today for a $1,000-a-plate chowdown to help engorge George Nethercutt’s senatorial challenge feedbag.

Meanwhile, our anti-war bunch is rising to the challenge with the usual uninspired antics.

The demonstrators, states a newspaper account, are making signs. They plan to exhibit them along a boulevard the Bush motorcade may or may not use.

What’s happened to civic activism?

It’s so sad.

If only our local lefties could reach back into Spokane’s hippie-dippy glory days and take a page from the Pat Stiley Playbook of Political Protest.

Now we’re talking high jinks.

It was 30 years ago last month that Stiley, an attorney and anti-establishment renegade, dreamed up some memorable monkey business for President Richard Milhouse Nixon’s visit to open Spokane’s world’s fair, Expo ‘74.

The plan involved counterfeit tickets, dye packs hidden in underwear and an elderly skywriter who, for $2,000, agreed to fly over the floating stage behind the Washington state pavilion and write “I-M-P-E-A-C-H N-I-X-O-N” during Tricky Dick’s speech.

“We didn’t have the Internet back then,” notes Stiley. “So it wasn’t easy.”

I met Stiley for breakfast Wednesday morning at the Satellite Diner. Over runny eggs and sausage, he graciously retold the hilarious tale of his covert activities during the Nixon visit.

Stiley is still proud of the lunacy he and his pals pulled off that day in May.

However, the fact the skywriter chickened out two days before the event still bugs the man no end.

“He got scared,” Stiley says. “It was heart-breaking.”

In Stiley’s eyes the stunt would have been an opportunity for “theater, political protest and to entertain the community with a dying art.”

It’s an opportunity lost in these times of terrorism and code-orange security alerts. A skywriter would be blasted out of the air before the poor fool poofed out two letters.

Stiley wears dark suits, dress shirts and ties these days. His dusty blond hair is so short he could be mistaken for a GOP loyalist.

Don’t be fooled.

Underneath the conservative camouflage is the same wild child whose anti-Vietnam War protests back in the day got him arrested five or six times.

Stiley’s business card for his firm – Stiley, Madel & Cikutovich – is a packet of rolling papers printed on the outside with the Washington statute that governs the use of medical marijuana.

Stiley hasn’t changed a lick.

But for all of his passion and commitment to liberal causes, you won’t find a trace of mean-spiritedness in him. There’s a rich vein of impish humor running through everything he does. That’s what makes Pat Stiley special.

The plot against Nixon, for example, was filled with devilish fun.

Though the Nixonian visit was a public event, Stiley says you needed a ticket to get into the venue. The catch, he adds, is that the tickets were distributed through the Republican Party.

No problem. Stiley says he persuaded a printer friend to counterfeit a wad of them.

“Now we’ve got access,” he says.

He and his buddies put the call out. He figures 100-plus protesters infiltrated the event.

Some of them carried dye packs in their underwear. The U.S. Navy uses the packs for ocean rescues. Stiley and his friends used them to symbolically stain the Spokane River a bloody reddish orange.

He can’t recall how effective that was, but “it was pretty.”

Then came a moment Stiley was waiting for during Nixon’s speech. The president handed Stiley and his pals a great setup line. Stiley can’t remember the exact wording, but it was something about what Nixon planned to do for the country.

“Resign!” yelled Stiley. “Resign!” echoed the others.

Stiley had barely uttered the word, when someone behind him grabbed his 2-foot ponytail and yanked hard. Stiley says he tumbled backward in a heap.

“It hurt like an SOB,” Stiley says. When he got back on his feet, he discovered that some Republican had stolen the “Impeach Nixon” sign he smuggled in.

Neither Stiley nor any of his crew got arrested that day. Nixon’s days, however, were numbered. Done in by the Watergate coverup, the Dickster quit his post rather than be disgraced via certain impeachment.

Stiley threw a party that day. He bought three bottles of cheap champagne and some plastic cups. Then, he says, he wandered out into the intersection of Monroe and Indiana and started stopping cars.

“I poured champagne and let them know,” he says.

Yes, today’s protesters can learn a few things about civic disobedience from this guy.

“Were I younger and in better shape I’d be out there,” says Stiley, when asked if he’d be joining the anti-Bush bunch. “And I might yet.”