Print this articleThere are two constants in late autumn in Seattle. First is rain, the crushing deluge of water and gloom that makes people desperate for sunshine, no matter the price. Second, are the protests.

There was the anti-World Trade Organization rubber-bullet party that shut down the city in 1999, last Nov. 30's ' N30 ' anniversary and today's N30 redux, with events all over the city calling for civil rights, a halt to the war in Afghanistan and an end to poverty.

Tym Parsons will be out there on the street as well. A 43-year old librarian and musician, he'll follow the N30 crowds handing out fliers. Maybe he'll carry a sign, as part of a push for a Sunday event that he hopes will become the next big annual march in Seattle. Call it D2. Just don't confuse it with the anti-WTO, anti-capitalist rallies people expect from Seattle.

What brought those groups together are their hatred of capitalism, says Parsons, who is rail-thin, has a nearly shaved head and wears a T-shirt with a caricature of his hero, the late author Ayn Rand. That's not what this town is about.

Parsons loves capitalism. He loves it like leaves love the sun, the way an SUV loves gas. As the organizer of the WalkForCapitalism (W4C) march here Sunday, he's been working with a core of six trying to turn a quirky idea from an Australian radio talk-show host into something people have to notice.

Along with groups in more than 100 cities around the world, they're trying to get people into the streets for capitalism.

A rally for capitalism? It might sound crazy, even stupid to some. As Vanessa Lee, an N30 organizer, put it: Doesn't capitalism get enough attention as it is?

Well, no, says Tom Boes, a 34-year-old architect who was a Marxist in his early 20s and created the Seattle W4C Web site. Capitalism is not a historical inevitability, he says. Without its defenders, it's not going to stand.

Sunday's event will probably look something like this: Starting at 1 p.m., whoever shows up ' whether it's 10 or 100 ' will walk from Benaroya Hall to Westlake Park, where they'll hold a rally. Along the way, people will hand out double blue ribbons, the symbol at all the W4C marches of the glory of capitalism.

During the day, the group will present the Capitalism Award, meant to honor a person ' be it businessman, artist or teacher ' who best embodies the tenets of capitalism. Greg Clark, a 51-year old coin dealer who has been a member of the Libertarian Party since its founding in 1971, will present the award to Bill Gates (not expected to attend).

Why Bill Gates? Come on.

As a beneficiary of mankind, he's done more than a thousand Mother Teresas, says Prodos (né Prodos Stefanos Nicholaou Marinakis), the Australian talk-show host who conceived of W4C. We are all the beneficiaries of his selfishness.

So what, then, had Clark done to deserve the honor of extolling Gates? I volunteered, he says. That's how we all got our positions here.

Capitalism.

For some, it's as polarizing a word now as communism was 30 years ago. Among the N30 crowd, the belief is that unchecked capitalism causes huge inequalities, creating billions of poor, polluting the Earth for profit and squashing people's rights. It is capitalism, they say, that created the mammoth multinational corporations that want to drill for oil in wilderness, that run deadly factories in developing nations and start wars to guard their investments.

It's currently the ruling ideology, says Dustin Washington, one of the organizers of this year's N30, anti-WTO events. I find it crazy that some people in this city sit in restaurants eating $500 meals while others have to beg on the streets. That's just not moral.

Naturally, the W4C crew disagrees. Pure capitalism, the kind advocated by the 18th-century economist Adam Smith, isn't the same thing as the system we call capitalism today. Rather than subsidizing industries, it would set them free to survive on their own. It also would do away with much of the regulatory state, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of Labor.

It would be paradise, Parsons says.

Ever read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead? How about Atlas Shrugged? If so, you might get an idea of how this paradise might look.

Stalking behind W4C is not the College Republicans but the specter of Rand. Much like Karl Marx, she created an ideology with her work, inspiring thousands through her sharply drawn heroes, men and women who are complete individuals, regardless of the consequences, and believe in an absolute version of individual rights.

Rand's books are very, very long, filled with passages expounding her philosophy. Many of her followers are like Parsons and Boes, people pulled more to theoretical discourse than action. Organizing them into a street army isn't easy.

From his base in Melbourne, Prodos urges his troops not to waver. As a radio host who moved to the Internet a year ago, Prodos has been both repulsed and impressed by the actions of the anti-WTO groups. He condemns those who are willing to use violence to achieve their aims. But he admires their ability to get noticed.

Politics changes through the grass roots, and the left knows that, he says. We need to get to the people on the street.

Prodos, 43, will make just about anyone who e-mails him a coordinator for a city. The result is a lot of people who don't know what to do. Rosemary Gately, the coordinator in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., has sent numerous e-mails to other Prodos followers seeking advice on how to put a march together. There have been questions about permits, picking someone for the Capitalism Award and the fear that no one will show up.

I have literally been shaking in my boots at times, she writes.

In Seattle, the W4C group won't speculate about how many will brave late autumn's constant drizzle and drip. But no one expects the event to draw even close to the number likely to march today as part of N30.

I think it'll be a success if two people show up and do it, Boes says.

Parsons is aiming a little bigger. I spoke to the College Republicans at the UW, he says. We expect some of them will show up.