Here are some photos from the "No War On Iraq" protest my friend Luke and I went to today, 10/26/02, in San Francisco.

We had proud escorts:


It took about 3 hours for this stream of people, on Market St., to all get to the Civic Center. Check out those signs...


Some vigilante countermarketing: (spraypainted onto the street w/a poster-sized stencil)


A thoughtful background:


More photos from the march:


We arrive at the Civic Center. More good signs; lots of people.


This could be a clever allusion to pretzel logic; but it surely has to do with the 'pretzel incident'.


Some solidarity for the late Paul Wellstone - a hero of the people, indeed - and some speculation.


Some interesting symbols:


More signs:


Finally, we used Luke's sign to leave a little reminder behind.


It's funny how this many people can march in San Francisco, yet the media hardly mentions it. A nonviolent protest just isn't interesting enough, I guess. Well, like that one sign said: "Weapons of Mass Distraction... Kill Your TV". There is more wisdom in that statement than in a weeks' worth of TV news.

One thing I noticed in particular (beyond the incredible number of people) was the age distribution - this wasn't just a bunch of old hippies, it was a perfect distribution of all ages, from pre-teens on up to grandparents.

This is the year 2002. It's time for us to grow up and run our nation like civilized, responsible adults - not like bullies.

The organizers:
      http://www.iacenter.org/
      http://www.internationalanswer.org/
Coverage:
      Article at SmirkingChimp
      Article in San Francisco Chronicle
      Article at CommonDreams.org
Sign the petition: http://www.votenowar.org
Look up your senator/representative's voting history: http://issues2002.org/