Saturday, March 22, 2003		San Francisco 
First Saturday after bombs started to fall

Today was a worldwide protest, coordinated mainly by International
A.N.S.W.E.R.  Their acronym is ridiculously hard to type but it does
stand for something: Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.  The website
is easy to find: www.internationalanswer.org.  I heard sporadic
reports of marches in Europe and in the U.S.: generally marches were
smaller (more on this later.)  An exception to this is NY which put SF
to shame; in NY 400,000 people, reportedly, marched down Broadway.

Since the protest was a last-minute deal, there were no buses coming
from the south bay.  I drove up to Daly City and took BART (subway)
from there.  BART was $2.20 each way.  The change machines were
broken.  The BART ticket machines didn't give change.  The person in
the BART office had no money and was selling no tickets.  There was
something sadly ironic about our pathetic public transit
infrastructure, as we engage in imperialist shrugs for control of oil.
One guy counselled me, "Just get a $20 ticket, the occupation is going
to last a long time." (Meaning, I'd have plenty of opportunity to use
the magnetic-stripe BART ticket.)  I ended up fishing out correct
change from my purse.

There were in between 50,000 - 100,000 people massed in SF.  Why the
smaller numbers?  Protest fatigue?  Rallying around the troops?
Cautious of rain?  Bad press from somewhat-violent civil disobedience
protests the two days previous?  Not enough time to organize and get
the word out?  No superstar speakers?

I listened to NPR instead of the speakers, who were pretty awful.  I'm
sure their hearts were in the right place but they need to take a
class in Rhetoric.  Also, microphone control.  I think people
shouldn't scream into a mike.  This is just my personal pet peeve.
"We can HEAR you", I'm thinking.

I got to Civic Center plaza around 12:20.  The rally started at 12.  I
cast longing glances at the Asian Art Museum across the way.  Some day
soon I'll come back up to SF for a private peaceful afternoon at the
renovated Asian.

The march proper was a long route - all the way down to Market, then
down to the Sony Metreon near Moscone, then back up Mission, then up
Van Ness, then finally back to Civic Center.  I felt both tired and
exhilarated and exhausted and rejuvenated.  

Each march, it seems, the crop of signs is renewed.  I am endlessly
amused by reading all the signs.  Some of them are getting more direct
and simple, just in case the FBI is relaying the messages back to the
White House: "Rumsfeld is a Bum", "My president is insane".  There
were a lot of new slogans centered around that weird phrase, "Shock
and Awe."

Around 3:30 I headed back on BART and sat next to a woman with a
remarkable digital camera.  She was looking through photos of the
march.  Stating the obvious, I asked, "Is that a digital camera?"  Why
yes it was.  "Are those pictures of the march?"  Again, why yes!  I
asked her if she published the photos anywhere or if she had a web
site.  She's a freelance photographer but she does have a web site and
a few photos are there.  She wrote down the URL for me:
www.mariannephoto.com.  "That's my name", she said, unnecessarily.
"It's my name too!" We were both excited about this, I'm not sure why.
Probably because we know so well the horror of people writing Mary Ann
down on official registration papers.  She's French, and my mother's
Austrian, thus explaining this meeting of names.  Recall that all of
us Mariannes are pleased to be named after Lady Liberty of France -
her name is Marianne.

Check out her photos - if you click on the third photo on the left
once you get into her gallery, you'll be able to scroll through her
march photos.  I'll put a link to her page on the
catalog.com/mrm/protest page.