Photo du Jour 516
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Photos from Black Friday
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With four helicopters flying overhead, we had no idea what to expect early this evening at Market and Seventh Street, at least in terms of turnout, regarding tonight's Prop. 8 protest.
It was huge. Massive.
Although SFGate (via AP) reports a scant 1,000 protesters, we can safely say that that number is false. People who showed up to protest the passing of prop. 8 -- gay, straight, tranny, black, Latino, Mormon, rich, poor, Christian, white, atheist, even a couple of furries -- were there in numbers that reached the thousands.
As of 8:15 p.m., we're hearing a number of around 25,000 people, at least according to KPIX. PinkNews reports 15,000+.
Protesters peacefully marched up Market Street, over to Castro and 18th, and finally draining into Dolores Park. They filled the place. The park was overflowing with angry, concerned, and hopeful California citizens. It was a sight to behold on a simple Friday night.
Videos from the scene below the photos.
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from all the twitter updates this is huge. but I guess the Chron has to undercount for laffs or something?
KPIX is reporting about 25,000.
Definitely more than 1,000. I don't know how the Chron could reach that low an estimate. Like, at least an order of magnitude off.
Oh, the Chronicle. More of its cute jokes.
This source is saying over 15,000.
A lot of people marched all the way back to City Hall, too.
I'm pretty angry at the Chronicle for underestimating it like this.
Not only that, but the estimate has gotten lower. When I first got home and saw the article, it said there were about 1000 people. Then when I looked an hour later, it said "a few hundred."
WHAT THE HELL? I am enraged that we are being minimized.
Also, thank you thank you thank you to SFist for covering what really happened.
I've put up a bunch of photos from tonight's march on Flickr here:
http://tinyurl.com/5r7vo5
Had a great time, and it was definitely more than 1000; I think it was more like 10,000 or so.
It's not actually the Chron misreporting the number, it's the AP wire. The Chron is just stupidly carrying the misinformation.
The Chronicle article in question is not from the AP wire. It was written by a Chronicle staffer. As of this moment, the article has been updated to remove any number.
The Chronicle has an almost congenital inability to listen or understand the town it is allegedly printed it, save for the rare occasions that Phil Bronstein, liberated in his new role can call bullshit on folks....
Now, to suggest that a significant demonstration is just a few hundered pissed off folks, one that pretty much shut down MUNI on Market St., one that (ahem) I wish we'd had 2 weeks ago to shut down the Mormons and their Million Dollar Lies, is a bit much.
I'm ticked that the liars won and denied friends of mine their rights. But I'm also mad it took a big FAIL to get people off their asses to do something. WHERE THE FRAK WERE YOU WHEN THIS COULD HAVE BEEN WON?!?
Seriously this is typical old-school Democrat crap, taking fail from the jaws of victory. Epic FAIL.
This photo caption that is linked to from the AP story now says the crowd was "thousands of people".
I was there!
Protester: What do we want?
Me: Marriage?
Protester: Equal rights!
Friend: You're the worst gay ever.
I'm glad to see the protesters were jovial and peaceful. A markedly different tone from some of the commenters on this website. Now there's a shocker.
It will be interesting to see what comes of the various protests. I think we got people's attention. Question is, what's act III?
for there to be any doubt that there were thousands is crazy, I estimate, (based on 25 people every 5 seconds passing by me) that there were somewhere around 20,000 marching. BOYCOTT UTAH.
Success is always achieved as long as it's over 9000! ^^
If anyone had any doubt about the corrupt condition of our media, check out this AP story, which is a redirect from the AP homepage "AP NEWS on MEDIA SITES" section, on the left.
They estimated that the protest in Long Beach was bigger than ours:
Even some local Long Beach media outlets 1 ... 2 ... 3 disagree.
Even worse, a lot of local LB media outlets, including TV and university papers/websites, they aren't even reporting it.
I was at the very front of the march and stepped off to the side to wait for a friend who was at the very back. It took about 35 minutes for a solid mass of people completely filling the west bound lanes of Market Street to pass by until she finally caught up to me. Can anyone calculate a good estimate off that?
Incidentally, from what I saw, the SFPD did a good job. The helicopters were a bit of overkill and annoying (I really hate being surveilled like we're all potential terrorists), but the officers on the ground that I talked to were friendly and not combative.
The only arrest I saw was someone who was, apparently, actively hitting someone else (I'm not sure why this occurred).
A big contrast between the SFPD and the LAPD, that's for sure.
seems the LBPD is even worse than LAPD.
I quess that LB is the socal version of Taraval station.
When we left Civic Center, I had estimated there to be about 1,000 people as well. But that didn't last long! We must have been picking up people along the way, because the procession quickly took on the appearance of Bay to Breakers in terms of numbers (though not tone.) By the time we hit Dolores Park, yes, there several thousands. Whether it was 10 or 15 or 25, who knows. But it was immense.
Someone told me that at the end, there were smaller groups that turned around, marched back to City Hall, and then back to the Castro again. Given that the reporter also has the route wrong (going towards City Hall, rather than departing from there,) it's entirely possible (s)he may have caught one of these smaller groups and missed the big story entirely.
Oh, and from what I saw, the SFPD were really doing a great job. They should be commended.
I think what we are reading about LB is what happened to others reading about SF-- a skewed report of what actually happened. The Press Telegram isn't exactly a Pulitzer Prize winning publication, says the girl who spent 20 years in Long Beach.
@cv
I was referring to the Chron article Brock linked to (and now changed to note AP provenance), claiming 1000. That was not written by a Chron staffer.
A march might make us feel better, but how does this directly help us reach our goals?
We need a new national organization based on the Obama campaign framework, with political, legal, technical, POLLING and other experts to develop and implement a multi-year campaign that will get us to our promised land.
Our community can be fantastic at organization for others, but when it comes to ourselves we just break down into arguments and go off in a million different directions.
@SFMan: People are a little pissed off about things right now. A march, as unproductive as it may have seemed, allowed a lot of us to literally walk it off and get past the unproductive part of anger to where we can now start doing more productive things. It's also a chance to meet like-minded people in person, who also want to do something more productive.
To that end, I'd say it was a great assistance in helping us to reach our goals.
there was some hot tail out there, too. made it all worthwhile.
Perhaps they were counting the group that stayed in Civic Center blocking Market and 9th street after the marching group headed toward Dolores. The marching group was massive, I watched the march back to Civic center, took several minutes for them to come from Castro onto Market and for Castro to open back up...again.
The group that stayed behind was 1000 give or take a couple hundred, but no match for the marching crowd. Amazing.
@Brock: Seriously. We do have the hottest protests.
I wouldn't say that it was overflowing Dolores Park exactly. It was more than people were coming into the park at the steps by the tennis courts on Church and got bottlenecked badly and some other people decided to cram into the street on Dolores and basically just fuck up traffic for the hell of it.
If the time when the speech started up is used to mark something close to the end there was still plenty of open space in the park. Yes, it was very large, but saying it was overflowing is also misrepresenting it.
What impressed me was how quickly it formed. I showed up around 5:10 or so and there was a crowd, but it wasn't massive. Maybe a hundred or two people. During some of the initial speeches there was no trouble wandering down in front (and getting a very tiny picture of myself in the Chron; the two girls with the veils in the Chron photos were actually a seat or two in front of me coming up from the Daly City BART station) By the time the marching started maybe 20-30 minutes later it was massive and it just kept growing and growing.
Boycott Utah
Boycotting Utah won't help. It's just hurtful and counterproductive.
4000 at least. I don't know about anything over 10k
I was there. Really good crowd. The helicopters were very helpful - they helped me and a friend find the protest, since we got there late.
Next up, Sacramento?
Oh, and yes, SFPD did an excellent job. They were helped by a very respectful protest. The ANSWER yahoos were in the very, very tiny minority.
Why would I have to boycott Utah? I have absolutely no desire to ever go anywhere near Utah.
I do think that the Mormons are being blamed perhaps a bit too much for this. While they were certainly involved and getting involved in an out-of-state race like this to try and take other people's rights away like that is just incredibly sleazy I think we need to pay a lot more attention to what's happening in our own state and how we can work to fix that.
hit people in their pockets and they start to take notice, when the ski resorts of Utah are half empty this season as they were in Colorado about 10 years ago due to a similar boycott, there was a lot of finger pointing there, and things changed for the better, a lot of folks go to Utah on ski vacations,and they are now been asked to go elsewhere.
We SHOULD boycott the Chronicle. Demand that they stop sweeping a massive and amazing protests under the rug and go around asking cafes that have subscriptions to get some other news source in the mean time. Who's down? San Francisco deserves a newspaper that reports the top stories the way they should be reported!
I'm sorry, but isn't this a day late and a dollar short?
Sure, but it may help build a more successful movement next time. (One hopes with new leadership.)
aj: ehh, we don't necessarily need "leadership." most of the reason Friday's march was so successful is because it was a collaborative effort of hundreds of people who took it upon themselves to spread the word. we don't need to be sheep following some "leader," we can all do our part and make it a much larger collaborative movement. Americans are too concerned with needing a "leader."
With four helicopters overheard, why are there no photos of the congregation in Dolores Park? Or in Civic Center at the end? Those were just great photo ops and I can't imagine why nobody has printed them!
joshb: there are plenty of photos of that. videos, too. just look around other websites.
STOP PEOPLE for a moment and think about how it must feel to vote for something and have it approved, and then have to see and hear over and over again from people who lost. Yes, you LOST. The state has spoken and is not yet ready for the sodomites to stain the sacred word of marriage.
BUT.......NOT TO WORRY SODOMITES.
In time, with the support of Hollywood, you will grind enough people to a point where they accept your unnatural actions. You will sneak your corrupt ways into the school system and right when they are done teaching evolution, they can mention mutations and gays. DO NOT FRET. It is clear by programs on tv like Gossip Girl, Family Guy, Simpson's, 70s Show, etc. that your time will come to be accepted. It won't change the fact that your actions are unnatural. Be patient, as it's only a matter of time.
I covered the San Francisco side of the 11/7 protest, shot on film:
Proposition 8 Protest, San Francisco, November 7th, 2008
-Christopher Layne