These are from Saturday, August 22nd 2009 in Pleasanton, CA. Pleasanton's a suburb of San Francisco in the east bay area.
The specific location is in front of their local congresscritter's office (Jerry McNerney is his name), which happens to be across the street from a local mall. This was part of a set of protests at every congressional office ("Recess Rallies") so you need to mentally multiply this protest by a thousand (for some reason some of them have multiple offices).
Jerry McNerney couldn't be bothered to show up, but I managed it despite a busy schedule. That being said I unfortunately just had a few minutes to spend and people will still arriving. My apologies to the protesters for undercounting the final result. Still, hundreds of folks were there, and despite calls on the left to counter-protest it just didn't happen.
This is my attempt at an overview shot. The problem is that the protest was so big there was no one place to see the whole thing, let alone photograph it. It was pretty impressive driving along it though. They quite intelligently faced away from the office building (which was empty) and faced the ring road around the mall.
This is pretty typical. Your basic angry mob member, well dressed, full of Nazi symbology. (I grew up calling that an American flag but that's not what Nancy Pelosi seems to think. Actually, that would explain a lot, wouldn't it? If Pelosi thinks that funny red white and blue symbol must be from the Nazis or something because those unpleasant people who keep talking about freedom and liberty keep waving it around.)
I don't think much of these need a whole lot of commentary. It's basically folks in sneakers and t-shirts. Mostly on target but with some 2nd amendment and global warming stuff thrown in. Nothing surprising other than the sheer number of them.
Note the twist on what would normally be a pro-abortion sign.
Let's focus in on the little one - we'll get to the back of her sign later. I usually don't approve of dragging kids into protests with some adult-made sign - the left is really into "mouth of babes" type of emotional arguments - but this was a nice spin on it.
Memo - if you want people to read the sign, the lettering needs to be really dark. Jerry McNerney's their local congressional weasel who announced the other day that he wouldn't show up. Folks were not pleased about this.
People were honking like mad - clearly very supportive. Then again, they were mall-going Americans.
Let's focus in on these a bit. You'll see lots of Grandma signs - the whole concept of cutting off healthcare once folks hit a certain age because it's just not cost effective really resonates with folks.
That feels like a good place for a page break for me. Want to see more? Off to page two...
You can contact me at info (at) ProtestShooter.com
