These are from Tuesday, May 1st 2008 in San Francisco, CA - May Day. If you got here directly, you might be interested in the main index page for this report.
For some reason there was a big gap before Code Pink, who brought up the rear. And that's enough of them, really.
At this point I basically ran to the head of the line and shot the protest all over again, trying to fill in a few things I'd missed. I walked 3.5 miles putting together the morning section of this report!
There were a lot of random Marxist statements.
This is just a stupid sign. It's right up there with "You can't deport them all.". The idea is that since we need workers there's nothing the government can do except throw up their hands and have the border totally open. Well, gosh, if it's that simple what's all the fuss about then?
This completely ignores any kind of middle ground that I think many Americans would be happy with - make it easier to immigrate legally (and from everywhere - not just countries that happen to have a land route), have more straightforward paths to citizenship, perhaps have guest worker programs without the abuses of the past (or of the current H-1B program which leads to all kinds of worker abuse), but at the same time have some kind of reasonable level of border security at both borders so you can keep out criminals and get rid of this "sanctuary city" nonsense and start deporting immigrants who commit crimes. You can quibble about the details, but in its general thrust wouldn't that make things better for everybody? But don't look for that in this report - these events aren't a place for moderates.
Cute dog though.
I'm seeing more and more of this - the far left is really upset with the Democrats. I think they were pretty hopeful when Pelosi was making a lot of promises she couldn't keep, and they're pretty let down by it all. You also see and hear a lot of people saying Obama won't be any better, so don't just slack off for 9 months and assume he'll fix everything the day after the inaguration.
I don't usually think of the Green party as Capitalists, but OK.
Our Lady Of Guadalupe.
Any bets as to this lady's original gender?
Here we're at the rally point - the raging grannies are posing on the steps hoping somebody will be dumb enough to take their picture. I didn't see them marching - I think they just waited at the rally point. Oh, look, there's NBC - way to promote these nitwits.
And of course you always get people selling stuff at these things. Yay for Capitalism!
Just in case you don't have one already.
Not enough Truthers for you? Ok, fine...
Truthers are seen as strange at these events only because it's more like "Of course, everybody knows that, why are you even focusing on it?"
This is kind of an honesty in reporting moment. You get a couple of hundred people marching and chanting and they look like quite a bit. Get them into a big plaza and it looks less impressive. I think one of the things we can do as bloggers sometimes is pull way back and show the less dramatic shot.
This or the one above is the shot the mainstream media would have used - fresh faced peaceful kid with some art related banner with no obvious nutjobs in the background. Is that an accurate representation of who attended this event?
Would they have shown you the black panthers? I think not.
Let alone this guy - He's a pig? Get it? Get it?
That's it for this section - if you would like, go back to the main index page for this report or you can go directly to the evening pictures.
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