Some of you may be wondering what the past 12-15 photo posts without comment were all about. They were photos directly from the grainy imaging of my crackberry about two protests in DC happening today. The ones at the back---ie, the beginning---belong to the anti-health-care-reform Tea Party protesters. There were only 3-4 hundred of them, and you may notice that at least one of them is carrying a sign reminding the remainder not to make racist slurs.
The rest of the pictures come from the March for America, a broad coalition of pro-immigration-reform protesters. I hadn't really paid attention to this and didn't realize it would be there, but I started getting an inkling when I got on the Metro and it was full of Latinos and others carrying signs and flags.
As you can probably see, it was a much larger protest than the Tea Parties, and that makes me quite happy. Liberal immigration policy is a net positive and bulwark for the left, and particularly Latino communities mobilize quickly and easily.
The difference between these protests could not be more stark. The Tea Party protests had a hard edge to them, a small lake of white, largely older faces with visibly petulant or resentful expressions, very "in your face." I stayed well back. The "energy" was, to put it mildly, not inviting.
The immigration protest could not have been more different. There was music, there was dance (including indigenous, I may upload a pic later), there was playing and laughter and picnicking. It was like a little moment of utopia, Latinos and blacks and whites and Asians (there was a small but vocal desi Muslim contingent I noticed). There was also, of course, anger---and why shouldn't there be? And, of course, there were speeches.
It was hard not to be drawn in, and I pulled myself away from it after a few pics. But for a moment it was possible to think that the glory has not transited just yet.
The rest of the pictures come from the March for America, a broad coalition of pro-immigration-reform protesters. I hadn't really paid attention to this and didn't realize it would be there, but I started getting an inkling when I got on the Metro and it was full of Latinos and others carrying signs and flags.
As you can probably see, it was a much larger protest than the Tea Parties, and that makes me quite happy. Liberal immigration policy is a net positive and bulwark for the left, and particularly Latino communities mobilize quickly and easily.
The difference between these protests could not be more stark. The Tea Party protests had a hard edge to them, a small lake of white, largely older faces with visibly petulant or resentful expressions, very "in your face." I stayed well back. The "energy" was, to put it mildly, not inviting.
The immigration protest could not have been more different. There was music, there was dance (including indigenous, I may upload a pic later), there was playing and laughter and picnicking. It was like a little moment of utopia, Latinos and blacks and whites and Asians (there was a small but vocal desi Muslim contingent I noticed). There was also, of course, anger---and why shouldn't there be? And, of course, there were speeches.
It was hard not to be drawn in, and I pulled myself away from it after a few pics. But for a moment it was possible to think that the glory has not transited just yet.
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