blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind

wow, i’m dumb. here we are practically on the eve of the next large protests about immigrant rights, and i just noticed that i left this write-up of the last one as a draft.

i made it out to today’s “mass student march against racist legislation” while my fiancée celia stayed home to work. going through my pictures afterward, it was another instance where a theme emerged that i hadn’t been all that conscious of while i was shooting: signs at the hr4437 student protest. not quite very shot is of a sign — i had to take the obligatory shot of a child on someone’s shoulders, holding a flag.

the most telling moment of the day for me was when this older latino gentleman and his wife turned around and started walking out, and he said to me as he passed by, “this is bullshit, this isn’t why i came.” what was on stage at the time was a couple of kids, one sporting a che guevara shirt, who were dealing with the music that were trying to rap to cutting out, and dropping a few “motherfuckers” into their overly broad take on current events.

it’s those sorts of central-casting leftists and strategic tone-deafness that makes my support of these protests wane, along with the presence of groups like fnla (a political party from el salvador with a less-than-savory past), the mexica movement, and the perpetual organizing presence of answer.

dave bullock was there and took his usual assortment of crowd shots. celia’s roommate lucas also snuck up on me, so you may see one of his pictures pop up in a newspaper somewhere.