Join the Impact Fort Lauderdale
We got to the protest about 90 minutes after it started and it was still going strong. There was a good couple hundred people there, with happy chanting, cheers when supportive people in cars passed by. There was an overwhelming wave, and I hope I don't sound too hippie here, of love and joy in the air. I've posted the other pictures I took today at a Flickr page here, and I've chosen a few for the blog.
This was an early one of the crowd. They lined an entire city block and wrapped around to one side, in places 4 or 5 people deep, many with signs and with a number of rainbow flags.
When I saw this woman, I immediately thought of Melissa McEwan's teaspoons, and even though I have no idea if that's what the wearer meant with the shirt, it was a good note for the day. Side note: if you're a Shakesville reader, then drop by over there and share some love and some coin if you have it.
Another crowd shot. This was the primary corner where the protest took place, where most of the police were, and where most of the positive responses came from.
These were guys across the street, trying to get responses from westbound traffic. I got lucky with this shot, as the two previous tries I'd gotten blocked by traffic.
As we were leaving, I ran into a former student of mine who had been at the protest earlier and was returning with a sign. I was quite pleased to see her.
It was a good turnout, and I was proud of my fellow Lauderdalians (is that a word? Firefox says no). One of the really good things to hear was the chant "black, white, gay, straight, we do not discriminate!" rising from the crowd every few minutes. There's been a lot in the news for the last week about tensions between the black and gay communities (with black gays being caught in the crossfire) over the perception passed along by CNN and others that blacks were responsible for the passage of Prop 8 in California. There was none of that here, and in fact there were a large number of people of color in the crowd, chanting and waving signs and cheering when cars honked.
Feel free to use the comments to tell us of your experiences at the Join the Impact protests today, or share other stories.
great pics! i have some of the dallas event up at my blog. see you in the shake!
http://infamousqbert.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/dallas-fights-for-queer-rights/
InfamousQBert said...
11:34 PM
Nice photos, Brian. Looks like a pretty solid turnout.
I went to my cousin's wedding yesterday. We all felt very threatened by the protests, since every time a gay couple marries a straight couple loses its wings...or something.
John S. said...
2:50 PM
I think the way it works is every time a gay couple marries a hateful bigoted argument loses its wings.
What a world we'll live in when those are all grounded! :-)
Amy said...
6:09 PM
Amy, you really need a new hobby if you think my comment was meant in any way to be taken seriously.
I know I shouldn't expect more from someone as willfully obtuse and heavily invested in fighting strawmen as you are, but really, you need to check your irony detector.
It's in serious need of repairs. Sheesh.
John S. said...
8:13 AM
John,
You may want to calibrate your own irony detector, since it seemed pretty obvious to me that Amy was playing off of your comment, not disagreeing with it in any way. The smiley face was a pretty clear indicator of that.
Brian said...
8:34 AM
You accused me of doing exactly what you were doing by making the accusation: you were being willfully obtuse, seeing me as a straw man, and taking a joke seriously. :-) Irony detector explodes! Is this blog comment performance art? If so, well done. All is forgiven, tho -- you must've written what I wrote with a serious hair in your rear, but I'm hardly going to fight with someone I'm agreeing with just because he couldn't tell I was agreeing. You should work on that, tho. The world will be a better place when we recognize that everything everyone says to us is not an attack. :-)
Amy said...
10:24 AM