Saturday’s peace march in San Francisco rates high on the rally-o-meter. I’m told by folk who went to the previous couple that this was smaller in scale then the past marches, but that the atmosphere was really good. Speaking literally of the atmosphere, the iron-clad predictions of rain and near-freezing weather were enormously wrong, emerging from the BART into Civic Centre Plaza we were all met by blue skies and warm sun. The speakers were fine I suppose, but by far the best thing was the depth and breadth of the creativity shown by all the individuals who came in expressing their opinions. Wide, wide diversity of folk there. The march set off before the amplified yakking was officially done, which tweaked the organizers mildly but I think was just fine and appropriate, we weren’t there to be lectured at we were there make a little noise of our own. Unlike previous march routes which led mostly up Market St among the serious, borded up shops of cowering chain stores to arive eventually in Civic Centre and the heart of Bay Area political authority, this one got it’s start there and once spontaneous community coherence had been obtained, circled it’s way through some smaller, freindlier business and residential neighbourhoods where the store ownes simply protected their windows with “war sucks” signs instead of plywood and hung out and watched and cheered. All very nice.

I was packing analog film (see below) so pictures will have to wait a day or two but I will post some. I saw my first bona fide celbrity since arriving in California (not even my impromptu visit to Hollywood netted me any citings). Turns out though that Martin Sheen is a bit of a religious wackaloon. The much better speaker was the ex-airforce former president of San Fran’s stock exchange, who asked that people be gentle with him because of his lack of dissent experience but enthused about how good it felt getting arrested outside his former place of business yesterday in a direct action. “I’ve been getting a lot of calls from freinds from the service and from business” he said “asking what they should do. I say they should get out somewhere public and push a little past their level of comfort. I hope you will join me”. OK ageing white guy in power, I’ll think about it. I imagine we all will.