I still have a bunch of photos to sort through, but here are the reports and/or photos from readers / commenters who attended the protests yesterday.
Commenter TBone:
Hi MM, hubby is not the best photographer and it was so cold that his fingers went numb right away, forcing him back to the vehicle to heat them just when the biggest crowds arrived, much to my dismay. I was too excited after that to remember to cross the street to get an entire crowd shot. The organizer and other random people who spoke up on the soapbox were compelling and I was paying attention to them! I got one sentence in, shouted from said soapbox: “WE ARE DONE ARGUING WITH NAZIS!”
I saw people from my new church as well as meeting new fellow citizens (I yelled out “Greetings, Fellow Citizens!” several times and got peoples’ delighted responses). I am signed up to.participate in all future actions as well.Some photos attached but I wish I had better “crowd size” shots because the protest was very well attended! These photos do not capture the large crowd size at all. But traffic driving by was also delighted to see us all with our signs, honking and shouting frequent encouragement. There was one single naysayer, a passerby who was quickly ignored. She loves Elno and I hope she gets the wrong end of DOGE, the hard way!
I am a lurker on the site who prefers to remain anonymous and so generally does not engage except for reading the site multiple times a day. However, I wanted to share some photos from the protests on 2/17 at the City Hall in Downtown Orlando, FL which I attended with my wife and a friend.I am bad at estimating crowds but I would guess the number in few hundreds, maybe as many as a thousand. The protest started at 12 PM. It was still ongoing when we left an hour later to catch the train back.There were multiple speakers, representative of various groups and communities threatened by the unconstitutional and lawless actions of this administration. These included – multiple transgender women including a military combat veteran, another male veteran, a Native American leader, a self-described white woman who said she survived a life-threatening miscarriage in 2014 only because Roe v Wade was the law of the land and thus allowed her to get the required care.There were people from all age groups including some school age kids and many young adults. There were many really creative signs, most hand made, that covered many different aspects of the flight we are forced to fight. Unfortunately I could not take pictures of all the signs I liked but managed to get a few that were close to where I was standing. I am not able to attach all the photos to this email due to size limitations. I am sending a second email with just additional pictures attached.
The last sign is via Comrade Scott who linked me to Facebook photos of the protest at Rocky Mountain National Park. Next year’s national park season is going to be a total disaster with the layoffs that are happening now.
I really appreciate everyone who took the time and effort to write in, and I’ll be cropping out protest signs for our ongoing series over here >>>>>>>>> on the bottom right.
