Entries tagged 'protest'

when i saw this sign about great immigrants in history, i had to rush over and get a picture. best sign i’ve seen at all the protests so far.

there has to be a story about waving the united farm workers flag and a gay rights flag.

this picture of a man’s fist and his flag of fists is one of those shots that i didn’t notice i was getting when i got it. (you have to love digital — shoot it all, sort it out later.)

i liked the simple sentiment of this sign on the back of one of the protesters out on broadway today.

they are already saying the downtown protest was smaller than the first one a few weeks ago, which sounds about right. we didn’t see nearly as many people walking towards the start point of the march as we did for that first march.

i took more pictures, but i don’t have time to sort through them now.

on our way to join the march, we stopped by my fiancée celia’s place and ran into her roommate lucas, uploading some of his first shots of the protest like this great shot of a protester from mexico waving the american flag. (watch out, that link will resize your browser window, and probably expire in a few days.)

i guess they realized that their usual may day march was going to get buried under the two big immigration marches on monday, so the communists were out doing their thing today. there were maybe 100 people in the march.

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.

the traffic in downtown los angeles appears to be severely screwed up, as the result of the street closures around city hall to cope with the additional protests against hr 4437.

i’ve seen some pockets of kids leaving the area, and i don’t imagine that the protests are really still going on. yet the streets are still closed….

it’s a good thing we aren’t planning on leaving downtown for dinner.

the march/rally was huge. estimates put it over 100,000 people. we didn’t head towards city hall at all, but there were people streaming down broadway, spring, and even main street (and probably hill street).

i put a few more photos up. you can also check out dave bullock’s photos of the march.

we ran into a couple (british or australian, my bet would be australian) in pershing square who had no idea what they had gotten themselves into when they decided to visit downtown today. i wonder how the los angeles conservancy’s walking tours went today.

someone needs to explain to me what the political value of waving around the flag of mexico or nicaragua is at a march like this.

my girlfriend celia and i were eating breakfast when we noticed people streaming down main, spring, and broadway. once we noticed a few of the people were carrying signs that said “no to hr 4437,” we were able to do the necessary googling to find out that there is a protest against an immigration bill that starts at 10am at olympic and broadway today.

we may check out the protest and march in a little bit before heading to see some of the buildings that are open as part of the downtown living weekend, and i’ll be sure to take my camera.

this is the front half or so of the people who were marching along. one of the people in the back had a sign that said “you are standing on indian land.” or something to that effect.

it pays to have a camera around when you hear drumming outside your window.

i need to do some research on a telephoto/zoom lens. this one is only $4000.

okay, that’s absurd. this one is only $1200.

maybe that’s still absurd. this one is only $160.

but maybe this lens would just make more sense as a new general-purpose lens. $430.