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San Francisco rallied against Proposition 8 (the same-sex marriage ban) starting at 10:30 a.m. Saturday morning. The demonstration is part of a slew of other Prop. 8 protests taking place across the United States. From Alameda to Fresno, New York City to Stockton, Los Angeles to Redding, this large scale Join the Impact: National Protest Against Prop. 8 effort promises to be a big one.
Check back for more images throughout the day. And if you have some shots you would like to share with SFist readers,. feel free to send them here.
Update I: A gaggle of protesters blocked the Octavia off-ramp resulting in several arrests.
Update II: "Thousands of demonstrators" showed up for today's (unusually warm!) demonstration.
Update III: A success. Great job, folks. (We'll have pics from the marches that sprouted from Civic Center rally later tonight.) Be sure to check out today's civil rights scene in Seattle, LA, Boston, and Austin.
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I like the first sign that says the "gay agenda" is about "1) Equal Rights and 2) See 1." That's genuinely direct, effective and relatable.
But in looking at the somewhat graphic text on the signs in photos 4 and 7 (not to mention the gut on the signholder in pic 7), I wonder:
Are these particular individuals with the graphic signs interested in winning people to their cause, or simply interested in picking at the scab of division?
I voted no on 8 and I understand how angry people are about the slim passage of the measure.
But there's a difference between an effective outreach to the people you (currently) NEED to win over, and... further alienating those people (thereby forcing yourself into more and more battles among people you may genuinely have common cause with.)
Those men no doubt have every right and reason to be angry and to vent. But take it from someone who's learned the hard way: it's not the smartest route forward...
I'm not sure if blocking the Octavia off-ramp is the best use of that kind of turnout. Sure the first 10 cars or so know that it's an anti-Prop 8 action. All the other cars are just pissed off and will never know.
That was probably the ANSWER people. Pay them no heed.
Good speech by Amos Brown by the way.
It was a great gathering. I'm glad they echoed the sentiments of peaceful protest, avoiding scapegoating, judgment and more hatred. Education, love and outreach are the only things that are enduring.
And ya, Amos' speech was great!
Agreed, Amos Brown was my favorite. Very moving!
What???! Arrests have been made?
My photoset is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/phyxiusone/sets/72157609156211957/
I didnt see any arrests or any hostility from police at all. I was at city hall from 10:30 until the crowd marched down to Market st then up to Union Square. The police I saw stayed out of the way and helped managed traffic.
The protest march went down Market, up Stockton through Union Square, through the Stockton Tunnel to Chinatown, cut over to Columbus through North Beach, up Taylor Street and through Fisherman's Wharf on Jefferson Street (*THAT* was an interesting mix of people...) up Hyde, down Beach Street past Ghiradelli Square, up Polk through Russian Hill, down Lombard and back to the Civic Center via Van Ness. That's where my group cut out, exhausted. Long walk, but SO glad we didn't just march to the Castro, preach to the choir, and call it a day.
I was happy that the big anti-choice march in January was mentioned- They march every year on the 24th on the Embarcadero and bash abortion and queer "lifestyles" simulteneously...they're such multi-taskers!
Oh and by "they" I mean the Catholic Archdiocese of SF, who I assume has issued an invite to the Mormon church this year, since they've been so chummy lately.
did anyone else see patti smith at the march today?
I'm kinda pissed off the SFPD only put the numbers at 7,500. Not surprised, it's their usual b.s., but pissed nonetheless.
Them-shits have been underestimating our numbers for decades. I remember one fine gay-pride parade a number of years back (stonewall celebration, I think, not sure) that was the biggest we'd ever seen, well over 500k and the SFPD actually had the gall to put the number lower than the previous year, 275k, the standard 1/2 of the actual number.
Travin,
That's across the board for any protest - there's always a big discrepancy between what the police estimate and the participants estimate, regardless of whether it's gay marriage, abortion rights, or the Million Man March. Maybe the only way to do it correctly is to take an aerial shot.
I guess what surprises me, as someone who isn't particularly passionate about the issue, was that it didn't get more coverage in major media, specifically The New York Times. This was an impressive nationwide (and international) protest with brilliant coordination. I really thought there would be more media coverage. The Times website has a little teeny bar on the bottom of the first half of the website, right above a story on military wives, and it has a small thing on the "bits" tech blog of the Times.
(True that the circumstances in which military families find themselves is also underreported. But yesterday would seem to anyone else to have been a milestone for the gay community, not to mention the unusual way in which this was coordinated, i.e., its rapid online social networking, so... what happened with the media?)
Usually, the participants overestimate and the crowd control underestimates. That is, both estimates are usually wrong. This excerpted from the "Million Man March" entry on wikipedia:
"March organizers estimated the crowd size at between 1.5 and 2 million people while the United States Park Police officially estimated the crowd size at 400,000. Farrakhan threatened to sue the National Park Service due to the controversial low estimate from the Park Police.
Three days after the march, Dr. Farouk El-Baz and a team of ten research associates and graduate students at the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University released an estimate of 870,000 people with a margin of error of about 25 percent. They arrived at this figure by enlarging aerial photographs taken by the Park Service and counting crowd density.[1] They later revised that figure to 837,000 +/- 20% (669,600 to 1,004,400). This revision was made when the Park Service provided original 35mm negatives; the first count was made with scanned printed photographs."
C'mon people... you're not going to win over those who voted Yes on 8 by protesting with men dressed in wedding gowns.