The last time a Republican was elected president after losing the popular vote, George W. Bush’s inaugural parade turned into a tunnel of boos and rude signs, as eggs – and some protesters – flew over security fences toward the motorcade.

Organizers anticipate even more visible dissent when Donald Trump rolls down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House on Jan. 20.

One major faction plans an orderly but large demonstration along the parade route. But a more radical effort operating under the tagline “no peaceful transition” seeks to block major roads into the nation’s capital and prevent foot traffic from reaching security checkpoints along the route.

“So, we’re going for what I’d generally term a clusterf--k,” says Legba Carrefour, a local anarchist handling press for the more radical protest-organizing network DisruptJ20, which has more than 1,700 Facebook group members.

“We are planning to shut down the inauguration, that’s the short of it,” he says. “We’re pretty literal about that, we are trying to create citywide paralysis on a level that I don’t think has been seen in D.C. before. We’re trying to shut down pretty much every ingress into the city as well as every checkpoint around the actual inauguration parade route.”

Carrefour says more than 200 people attended an organizing meeting at a local church Sunday on short notice. Photos show supporters representing a range of ages and interests. A member of the antiwar group Code Pink posed with a sign, as did people upset about Trump’s comments on Muslims, women and policing.

“Rapists deserve hell, not the White House,” one woman’s sign said.

Photos: Anti-Trump Protests Across the U.S. View All 26 Images

Members of various progressive groups are involved in DisruptJ20, but as individuals rather than institutional representatives, Carrefour says. The group’s website describes it as being assisted by the DC Welcoming Committee collective of experienced activists.

Protest plans often are overambitious and it’s unclear if there will be enough bodies or sacrificial vehicles to block roadways, or people willing to risk arrest by doing so, though Carrefour says the group has coordinated housing for a large number of out-of-town visitors and believes preliminary signs point to massive turnout.

The more moderate planning effort is led by the ANSWER Coalition – an acronym that stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. New York organizer Ben Becker says the group is seeking to stage an enormous demonstration along the route near the White House, assuming they are given permission for a spot that’s traditionally captured by national TV cameras.

Watch: TV footage of protests at the 2001 inauguration:



ANSWER currently boasts about 20,000 RSVPs on its website and is selling tickets for seats on chartered buses from major cities.

“The message we want to send to people is that it’s safe to come to D.C.,” Becker says. “We think the most important thing is having the largest possible turnout. We have a peaceful plan, it’s loud and it will be visible. Hopefully it will resonate with the communities that are so afraid right now and hopefully it will resonate around the world that the American people are not united behind Donald Trump and the Trump agenda.”

Although their approaches differ, the two organizers – both attendees of protests at Bush’s second inauguration in 2005, which focused largely but not exclusively on opposition to the Iraq War – believe people actually will show up.

Throughout the election campaign, some grand plans to protest Trump were flops, particularly at the Republican National Convention, where far fewer people protested than took to the streets a week later against Hillary Clinton when she received the Democratic nomination.

Becker believes the small showings before the election may be explained by a general belief Trump would lose to Clinton. The organizers see large protests across the nation following Trump’s surprise win as evidence that people are newly energized for activism. Becker says motivated immigration activists, the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality and the impassioned grass-roots presidential campaign of socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also provide a springboard for next month.

“We think it’s the beginning of a potentially massive new movement in the United States and it’s important that on that first day we send a message about our numbers, a message about our politics, a message about what it is in the Trump agenda that we reject,” Becker says. “We’re not encouraging any tactics that are going to detract from that.”

Becker declined to comment on the possibility of projectiles being launched in Trump’s direction or other actions he calls “hypothetical behavior that people probably won’t even do.”

Police struggle with anarchists prior to President George W. Bush's second inauguration in 2005. Mario Tama/Getty Images

There is some precedent for grand visions of snarling regional traffic, as the more radical effort seeks to do. In 2013, a group of truckers with various grievances caused a panic when one of its leaders announced plans to clog the Capital Beltway with three rows of vehicles driving exactly 55 miles per hour. Media attention created dramatic in-fighting, but ultimately four vehicles were stopped by police for driving side by side, briefly reducing all lanes of the highway’s inner loop to 15 mph.

Shawn Holtzclaw of the U.S. Secret Service, the agency that will lead inauguration security efforts with cooperation from local police, says guidance will be given on security near the parade route in early January. Specifics will be contained in a long document, he says, but he is almost certain eggs and “the obvious stuff” won’t be allowed past checkpoints.

The press office for the city's Metropolitan Police Department, which will assist with security for the event, referred questions to the Secret Service.

In addition to Inauguration Day protests, potentially well-attended public gatherings are being organized on social media for the day before the inauguration – to celebrate President Barack Obama – and for the day after, with a "Women's March on Washington" reaching hundreds of thousands of people on Facebook.

Carrefour says DisruptJ20 has no publicly announced plans to jump barricades along the inauguration parade route or throw projectiles at the new president, but that autonomous direct actions are encouraged.

“I can’t comment on specific stuff we’re doing like that, mostly because that would be illegal. But, yeah, it will get pretty crazy, I expect,” he says. "'Have fun!' I say."