4 posts tagged “protest”

I've realized that I always have a lot of fun at protests and marches... although before yesterday the last one I had gone to was International Workers Day back in May.  There's something about being in the middle of a large group of people who are energized about an issue that is so electrifying.  So anyway, the protest and march against Prop 8 yesterday were great.  It was hot as hell in Civic Center, so I periodically had to wear my sign on my head to keep from getting sunburned.  Speaking of which, here it is:

There were a lot of speakers, the two best being Tom Ammiano and Amos Brown, who both fired up the huge crowd.  I also enjoyed Carole Migden, who proposed slicing the state of California into two separate states, north and south, and then nominated herself as Governor of the newly formed North California.  Ha.  Here's a snippet of Amos Brown's speech... I would have taken more but I couldn't actually see him (although I was pretty close to the front):
  The speakers weren't quite done when we drifted away, but we had noticed that a march had started down Market street, and honestly our interest had kind of waned when a guy started singing a gay marriage folk song.  So we marched down Market until we hit Cafe Flore, where we stopped for cocktails and a light lunch.  Did I say it was a fabulous day, or what?
Oh, and finally, my favorite sign of the day:
  Closely followed by this one:

I have missed almost all of the Prop. 8 protests so far, because of having to work.  Nate and I went to the candlelight vigil on Wednesday, but we missed the beginning and it was almost impossible to hear the speakers.  I would have loved to be a part of the march on Friday night, but again I had to work.  Ditto today when there was a protest outside the Mormon temple in Oakland.  If I could have gone to that one my sign would have said, "Separate Your Church From My State."  Oh well, though.  This was a good one, too:

Okay, so this is a little late, but I just now figured out how to upload photos from my cell phone to my computer.  Don't laugh, I am slowly catching up with the rest of civilization.  Anyway, these are a couple of photos from last Thursday, ie May Day, ie International Workers Day.  I met up with Andrew and a couple of his classmates on Muni, where a large group of SFSU students had swarmed and taken over an entire train. 

I'm just glad I knew what was going on, because if I had innocently been taking Muni and all of a sudden a mob of students pounding drums and chanting "Si se puede!" had appeared, I might have found it mildly irritating.  But as it was, it was pretty fun to be caught up in the excitement.  We (our little group, not the entire mob) stopped in the Castro for a couple of beers before the rally in Dolores Park, and then joined the march to Civic Center before everyone wandered off in different directions.  I'm not the most political person, so for me the best part was just being out in the sun.  But like I mentioned already it was easy to get caught up in everyone else's enthusiasm, which made the whole thing pretty fun in the end.

I haven't had any internet service in my apt for several days, and I AM SUFFERING!!!  My work schedule has increased slightly as well, meaning I haven't had very much time to utilize Quetzal, my fave internet cafe.  So today it took me about ten hours just to go through my Google Reader, which had over 200 unread items.  And to think, until I was run over by that van two years ago and used my settlement money to buy my laptop, I used to lead such a simple computer-free life.  Anyway, my family was in town last week, and I was able to do all of those touristy things that I would never think of normally, like visiting Alcatraz and scouring Telegraph Hill to find the wild parrots.  I, of course, had forgotten to bring my camera along, but my mom took photos and sent me some.  They are kind of small, but I think you can get the gist of our touristy-ness:

And yes, we did track down the parrots, which are not really that hard to find as they make such a racket:
I actually really enjoyed Alcatraz, which I hadn't been to in over ten years.  They have a new (free!) audio tour which is quite superior to the human guide led tours in the amount of information and aura of history and authenticity.  Plus, the dummies that three inmates constructed (including pasted on hair from their own heads, ew!) were in place in their cells, as they would have been when guards discovered them.  Neat-o.
After Alcatraz we walked down the Embarcadero for lunch at a taqueria by the Ferry Building.  There were a few birds enjoying lunch there, too:
The next day was the big protest day, in honor of the 5th anniversary of the Iraq war.  I was at work so I missed the whole thing, but my family was right there in the thick of it: