"Look," she said, "I had, for five months, people sitting outside my home, going into my garden in San Francisco, angering neighbors, hanging their clothes from trees, building all kinds of things--Buddhas? I don't know what they were--couches, sofas, chairs, permanent living facilities on my front sidewalk."

Pelosi continued: "If they were poor and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they would be arrested for loitering, but because they have `Impeach Bush' across their chest, it's the First Amendment."

Pelosi is married to a multimillionaire investor, and her comments were charged with social resentment as well as political hostility. The antiwar protesters are not only unwelcome because they expose her hypocritical pretense to opposing the Iraq bloodbath--they are dirty, ragged and disreputable, and irritate the neighbors.

Pelosi's remark--imagine that riffraff "sleeping on my sidewalk"--is reveals the enormous social distance between the masses of working people, housewives, students who oppose the war, and the privileged ruling elite. And her disparaging reference to the First Amendment demonstrates the hostility of a big business politician towards the democratic rights of the working class.