How to Find Protests:
The most helpful local site is IndyBay which has a calendar. There's other stuff too, often blurring the line between political and just fun activities (like free showings of political movies). Other cities have similar websites, I'm sure, if not quite so extensive. A lot of items on IndyBay's calendar seem to really get filled in just a couple of days in advance, although you can learn the dates of many activities months in advance because their planning meetings show up on the calendar as well. Once you find a cause or an organization you find particularly fascinating you can subscribe to their mailing list. You probably don't have to subscribe to all of them - as an example if you're mostly interested in going to the major anti-war protests if you get on the lists of any of the larger organizations they're going to have a group there. It's fascinating to see their "news" coverage after an event, which often bears little or no resemblance to anything that actually happened.
I also recommend taking a look at ProtestWarrior which does counter demonstrations. Humor aside, their book "A Field Guide to Left-Wing Wackos" is actually very useful. It fills in the backgrounds of who these different groups are and it really helps to figure out some of the underlying dynamic between the groups. Unfortunately they've been totally useless as a way to figure out when events are let alone help them counterprotest - I've been trying to register there since September 2007 with zero success and they don't answer my email.
Also, just keep your eyes open at local cofee shops or on campus and you'll see this kind of thing:
Other Photographers Websites
There are lots of photographers who do protest photography as an occasional thing, but these two folks are very good at it and have been very supportive to me.
Zombietime - this is a really massive website of a photographer who is also in the San Francisco Bay Area who shoots protests. Luckily (?) there are so many events around here to cover we overlap less than you would think.
Urban Infidel - in the form of a blog, but the same sort of deal - she documents protests, but in her case in New York.
Also there's a new website - Ringo's Pictures - he has some wonderful current work and is adding in some older stuff and it's well worth a look. So far it's all in Southern California.
You can contact me at info (at) ProtestShooter.com
