JR from Orlando here. I am a lurker on the site.
Our report on the Orlando protest:
My wife and I attended the protest at City Hall with some friends. This was by far the largest protest of the year with really large crowd. The protest was in the morning because we also have the Orlando Pride Parade scheduled on the same day. We march in the parade every year so today is going to be a long day but so worth it.
Very well organized protest with multiple speakers and enthusiastic crowd. Some really clever, touching, entertaining signs. As many have pointed out, the crowd was vocal but peaceful. Lots of young people including some kids. One young girl led the crowd in pro-democracy chants for a while and received very enthusiastic and vocal response.
Lots of passing cars honked in support. Unlike the last protest, I did not see any MAGA counter protesters or trolls trying to invade the crowd. We left after 1.5 hours to get ready for the Pride parade. We saw a large group protesters holding up signs with loud chanting in an impromptu march from City Hall to Lake Eola. People with signs were all over downtown. Signs are not allowed in the parade area but plenty of people were walking around wearing protest t-shirts.
Thanks and Regards
(Note from WG: love the lobster that is boiling mad about the gaslighting!)
No Kings – HeleninEire – Queens, NY
WaterGirl
So may great signs!
Can someone explain the carrot sign to me?
Baud
Via Reddit, Iowa
HeleninEire
Wow. Great signs. Love the Stephen Miller one. Also…don’t anyone tell…but I am, and have been for 20 years, more than a little bit in love with Cartman. Truthfully, I’d marry him if I could.
Miss Bianca
Great signs!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@WaterGirl: ICE is notoriously out of shape. Maybe not Meal Team Six fat, but clearly people who haven’t done anything physical than high school.
jayne
passing through Maine today and decent sized protests in Saco and Portland. (Not a shock, but good to see).
Melancholy Jaques
@WaterGirl:
Where do I send the report & photos?
drdavechemist
Huge crowd here in Providence, RI. No pics (I’m a lousy photographer), but the marchers filled many blocks of city streets, so certainly several thousand. Lots of old white folks like me, but plenty of youths, families with kids, and diversity represented on every imaginable axis. Two of my favorite signs:
The only minority destroying this country is billionaires.
When a clown moves into a palace, it doesn’t turn the clown into a king; it turns the palace into a circus.
WaterGirl
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Ah, okay, thanks.
WaterGirl
@Melancholy Jaques: If it’s a small number of photos, you can send them by email. If it’s 4 or more, easiest for me is if you use the OTR form.
Scout211
Here’s a short YouTube video of today’s human sign on Ocean Beach. Today it was:
It looked like there were at least twice as many people than there were last time.
Baud
Good sign
HeleninEire
@Baud: VERY good. ❤️
justsomeguy05
Given facial recognition technology, am I wrong to feel uncomfortable that peoples faces are being posted without their permission ?
Baud
Chicago
Boston
Mr. Mack
Hey Watergirl did you mean to lump the Springfield Tn shots with the Orlando pics?
Mr. Mack
@justsomeguy05: Valid. I made a habit of asking anyone I singled out. But I share your concerns.
WaterGirl
So many of these signs are my favorite! :-)
Although I did guffaw loudly enough just now to scare the kitty when I saw one of frosty’s signs just now. (you’ll see them later today).
WaterGirl
@Mr. Mack: No, I did not!
I already had them set up in a separate post. Just grabbed too many from the media library for this Orlando post.
I just deleted yours from this set. Yours will go up later.
Mr. Mack
@WaterGirl: It’s like you’re busy or something!
HinTN
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I think it’s about the shape of the carrot…
mvr
We were in Wyoming today so missed the event in Lincoln. Instead we joined 28 or so people and two dogs in Rawlins Wyoming the County Seat of Carbon County where we have a small cabin.
It was cold but well-organized. Signs were passed out and the police/city officials had been contacted to confirm that no permit was needed to stand on the corner of the main drag and another major street near the interstate exchange. Most of us managed to make it for the whole of the two planned hours.
Got a good number of positive responses (Honks and cheers and thumbs ups), a small 3 person counter-protest that gave up after half an hour, and few Diesel pickups showing their displeasure by gunning their engines and sliding around (one nearly hit a guardrail). A few passers by even joined spontaneously.
Not bad for a very conservative county in Wyoming. The organizer said he’d been the only one there at a similar event back in June.
JoeyJoeJoe
I was at the one in Alexandria Virginia. It filled up the entire area in front of City Hall. There were a couple of national guard people on a nearby roof, but they didn’t do anything.
WaterGirl
@Mr. Mack: Yes, it’s not like I don’t have dozens of emails coming with a bunch of attachments. :-)
Happy to do this, but files are flying everywhere so it’s no surprise to me if something ends up in the wrong place.
lowtechcyclist
@HeleninEire:
I hope he got Kenny out of there before he got killed! 😁
HeleninEire
@lowtechcyclist: I only saw Kenny after I posted about my boyfriend. But, yes, I hope so too.
Ishiyama
There are at least a couple of hundred people in Hilo, Hawaii, lining the Bayfront Highway, and it’s only 10:30 a.m.
hueyplong
Spouse and I went to small town NC one. Lots of honking horns, no counter protests, and I saw only one drive-by middle finger. Everyone pleasant the whole time.
Baud
Salt lake city
dc
We had a great crowd in Durham, NC. We were lucky to have Reverend Barber send us off for the march after the rally in our Central Park. Amazing speaker.
WaterGirl
These are the posts I have set up and ready to go. But there are others I am still working on.
rikyrah
Someone explaining the Argentina bailout
tiktok.com/t/ZP8ApRhdo/
narya
The Evanston protest was at least twice as large as the June one, I’d say. A few thousand people–and I actually lowered the average age, and I’m an Old. Also, much better PA system, than last time. And there were at least two other protest locations between Evanston and the massive one downtown as well as a several north and west of downtown.
WaterGirl
@dc: I would have like to hear Rev. Barber and Rev. Warnock today!
Ben Cisco
@WaterGirl: I linked to sites covering the rally; I was not there and did not take the pictures.
cmorenc
@justsomeguy05:
If you knowingly show up at a protest in support of it, the point of which is to be counted in support of it, IMO you’ve voluntarily given up the sort of privacy interest against having your image posted without explicit permission that you could otherwise be entitled to claim with respect to simply being somewhere at a random hour and day on a city street.
catclub
I was at (drove by) the Worcester Mass rally. I honked. A lot. It was fun.
The most common sign was:
Immigrants make America Great
… and variations thereof.
dc
@Ben Cisco:
Here’s Rev. Barber at the Durham rally: ourmoralmoment.substack.com/p/we-are-america-all-of-us-indivisble?utm_source=podcast-email&publ…
geg6
That first photo is actually my friend who went with me to the Beaver, PA rally. When I sent the email I forgot to identify my nym. Sorry!
This is small town Western PA, about 35 miles west of Pittsburgh. In June, there were 600 or so on the courthouse lawn. I have no idea how many this time. I would, however, estimate that it was at least that many. Lots of people blowing horns and giving thumbs up and only two obvious MAGAs across the street ostentatiously filming us. Fuck ‘em, as a wise man once said.
catclub
I saw a guy wearing a crown ( and beard) and thought the thing to put on it was:
Only Burger
frosty
@cmorenc: Well, true, but why give the fascists somebody’s picture to work on? I went back and cropped the faces out of the ones I sent.
I’m planning on deleting all of mine off the phone before I hit US Customs. They’re on email so I can get them back.
patrick II
NO
FAUX-KING
WAY
Geoduck
Large crowd at the rally in Olympia, WA, the state capitol. I didn’t take any pictures.The rain held off, which was nice.
Filled the space between the Capitol Dome and the Temple of Justice, and lined the street going by the capitol campus. Lots of inflated animal costumes, including dinosaurs, dragons, unicorns, at least two axolotls and a deep-sea angler fish. And frogs of course. No sign of any counter-protesters. And one effective moment was when a line of women marched up to the site all dressed in red Handmaid costumes. EDIT: Found a video of the Handmaids on Reddit.
Timill
@WaterGirl: I have some shots from Oak Ridge TN – about 1500 as opposed to about 1000 last time.
Favorite sign, held by a Handmaiden: “Fuck Trump. Fuck ICE. Beat Bama” just for the juxtaposition of ideas.
Ben Cisco
@dc: Awesome 👍🏾
WaterGirl
@geg6: No, you shared your nym. I just grabbed that one by mistake when I was adding the Orlando pics.
Your 3 (including that one) is in another post, so I just deleted the one of yours that was in here by mistake.
lowtechcyclist
I wonder how Squeaker Johnson’s “Hate America” rally on the Mall went? I was in DC, but I didn’t get over there to check on it, as the No Kings rally was on Pennsylvania Avenue.
In the morning, before going into DC, I was at the rally in front of Dunkirk District Park in Calvert County, MD. I think we had close to 300 people there, and everyone was in good spirits.
No One You Know
My first group art show was today, because of course it was! So I featured my No Kings sign (inspired by Basquiat) and my Hands Off! sign (featured at previous SSA protests).
BioGirl
@WaterGirl:
phallus
WaterGirl
@BioGirl: Welcome!