WASHINGTON – The nerve center for much of the protest that will blanket this city over the next 24 hours buzzed yesterday in unfinished warehouse space atop a shuttered car wash in a transitional neighborhood north of Capitol Hill.

Outside, there were few signs of the legions of activists preparing to express their dissent at today’s inauguration of President Bush. A closer look, however, showed that someone had inscribed peace symbols in the newly fallen snow on most of the cars in the area.

Inside, as Beatles songs played in the background, artists readied banners, placards, and large papier-mache puppets for the demonstrations.

“Not my president,” one sign said.

“This Bush needs composting,” said another.

Many of the signs invoked the central theme for most of the expected protests: opposition to the war in Iraq. A young woman toiled on a sign that read, “W is for Warmonger.” Something representing blood appeared to drip from the last word.

“The war is just lunacy,” said the woman, who declined to give her name but said she is a student at Cornell University. She added, however, that her anger toward Mr. Bush goes well beyond the war.

“His policies are driving the whole country into the ground. I think that is obvious,” she said. “There’s so much to hate right now.”

Amid the spray paint and the stencils, a Smith College student from Maplewood, N.J., was working on her own sign. “It’s going to say, ‘This is about a system. Kerry supported the war, too,'” Megan McRoberts, 20, said.

Most of those at the so-called convergence space said they had not yet decided which of three planned protest marches to join.

One procession, sponsored by the D.C. Anti-War Network, is expected to end with a “die-in” at Lafayette Park, adjacent to the White House. Participants plan to lie down in the street, risking arrest by police.

As many as 10,000 anti-Bush demonstrators are expected to fill the only significant area reserved for protests along the parade route, a park that sits on Pennsylvania Avenue between the Canadian Embassy and the federal courthouse. The National Park Service granted a permit for a demonstration there to an antiwar group, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism Coalition, or ANSWER.

While the group filed an unsuccessful court suit complaining that the location was inadequate, a spokesman for the organization said yesterday that Mr. Bush’s limousine is almost certain to face the protest head-on before turning up Pennsylvania Avenue.

“The first thing he sees is our rally,” the spokesman, William Hackwell, said. “I don’t see any way around it, unless they put a big truck in front of it.”

Protest organizers differed about whether the cold and the several inches of snow that fell yesterday would keep numbers down. Some said it might, but others said a crush of weather-conscious onlookers arriving just before the parade starts could spark conflicts between invited parade guests and demonstrators.

At the parade protest site yesterday, contractors erected a set of bleachers as a group of volunteers struggled in the snow and bitter cold to build warming tents for workers who will have to stay in the park overnight.

“The main thing for me is the war,” one of the volunteers, Terence Taffe, 50, from Interlaken in upstate New York, said. “I’m just hoping somewhere in the media there will be some pictures of people who don’t agree with the administration.”

Mr. Taffe, who said his best friend was in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, said Mr. Bush’s policies will lead to more violence against Americans.

“I really don’t like people shooting at us and stuff, but I don’t think pissing people off – it’s not the right answer,” he said.

Mr. Taffe said he is baffled that his friend, who survived the terrorist attack, supports Mr. Bush.

“I guess it’s just fear,” the activist said. “People are afraid.”

Another protester, Michael Bedoian, 54, of Seattle, said he, too, was motivated by anger at the administration’s policies in Iraq.

“You don’t shove democracy down people’s throats at the end of a gun,” he said.

Back at the convergence center, volunteers from a group called Seeds of Peace ladled out a curry-and-rice mix to hungry activists. Asked if the concoction was vegetarian, a volunteer replied, somewhat contemptuously, “Vegan!”

While parts of the warehouse space were a bit chilly, other features outstripped those seen at protest-coordination venues in other cities. Visitors lined up for turns on four computer terminals offering free Internet access. One man gathered prospects for an anger-management seminar. Posters and flyers touted a wide variety of events and causes.

One of those who helped arrange the space, Adam Eidinger, said it was organized and paid for by several Washington area residents who wanted to provide a safe place for activists to meet. “It has a lot of people fighting for justice and against the Bush agenda,” Mr. Eidinger said. He recently mounted an unsuccessful Green Party bid to be elected as the capital’s shadow congressman.

A sign outside the building said police and fire officials did not have permission to enter. Mr. Eidinger said none had attempted to do so, at least not in uniform.

Among the protests being promoted at the center is a “March on the Neocons” set to pass by the offices of several organizations linked with the neoconservative movement. The demonstrators planned stops at the American Enterprise Institute, the Project for a New American Century, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, and the Weekly Standard magazine.

“Bush listens to them. They’re the powers that be,” a Washington woman involved with the demonstration, Carol Moore, said. “They’ve become the administration.”

Ms. Moore accused the neoconservatives of pushing for American military strikes on Iran, Syria, and North Korea. “They basically support whatever Israel does and aren’t going to complain,” she said.

One acronym-rich slogan suggested on flyers announcing the march: “MEMRI, JINSA, AEI, PNAC, I-SAPS, You all lie.” MEMRI refers to the Middle East Media Research Institute, an organization that translates Arabic-language press accounts into English. Some articles linked on the Web site promoting the rally decry the “Israelization” of the government and warn of the “dual loyalty” of top policy-makers.