The San Francisco Protest...
It was unbe-frickin-lievably hot in the city today. We're having really weird weather for November. Normally our Novembers are cold and rainy, but I think we've had two rain days this month and it's been crazy hot. Today in San Francisco it was something crazy like 78 degrees. Standing in the sun for two hours it felt a lot hotter than that, especially since we were all wearing black. BROIL.
By the time we got there, City Hall was pretty packed. Various news organizations are guess-timating between 4,000 and 7,000 people showed up. That seems really small to me. I would've guessed at -least- 10,000 judging from the size of the crowds I had to wade through.
The crowd wasn't just "protesting" this time, they were mad. Faces were tight. Jaws were clenched. I haven't seen that level of tension before at any gay protest that I've been to. Everyone seemed to have been dealing with massive levels of rage, hurt and frustration.
Oh yeah, and grief. Lots of black clad people, black clad brides too.
'Course that doesn't mean we can't have clever signs...
If you want to call Arnie, the first number on this sign was a 9. Now you can call his office directly.
There were many fantastic speakers, but to my mind, the best speaker of the day was Reverend Amos Brown. Rev. Brown was introduced as one of eight people who were actual students of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His speech was very moving...
Click to viewAfter all of the speakers, a chorale group called "The Lollipop Guild" came out and sang, and it was pretty awesome to hear the whole crowd singing along, another sort of "sniffle sniffle" emotional moment.
Once the main protest dispersed, the gathering became a march through the city...
...up Market...
...to the Castro.
By the time we got to the Castro, Soren and I were answering "What do we want? LUNCH. WHen do we want it? NOW!" so we didn't go along when the marchers turned back to go charge up to Union Square. We had three hungry teenaged girls with us too (Ree and two of her friends) so we decided to call it a day.
My favorite protester...
