"Mickey is a rat! Mickey is a rat!" That's what my placard read. It's also what I vociferously chanted as I marched down Pennsylvania Ave with hundreds of other concerned citizens in a protest march against the proposed Disney's America theme park project planned for the historic Haymarket area of Northern Virgina. That was in the summer of 1994, my first summer of living in the DC metropolitan area. Later that same year, Disney's top gun Michael Eisner dropped the plans for the "theme park" without explanation. Maybe protest marches do work sometimes. Marilyn and I now live in Michigan, but two weeks ago, right on the verge of bursting cherry blossoms, we were back in DC. Mickey Mouse was there too. Actually 76 Mickeys were in DC, all of them standing stiff as plastic in
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