Rally report

I'm so far behind on my friends-list, it's not at all funny. I may never catch up, but that's life.

Here's my very lengthy report on the weekend, the main event of which was the HUGE peace rally in NYC. It was fantastic all around, especially as it involved meeting blunaris and helping her enjoy her first-ever rally experience. :)

The rally was *incredibly* chaotic in terms of organization -- not of the people running it, but of the cops trying to contain/control it. In this sense it was quite different from the D.C. ones that we've been to. Frankly, the NYPD had their heads up their collective asses. Everything the NYPD had done was designed to discourage people from rallying -- the blocking off of some streets, the (stupid!) failure to block off others for car traffic, the refusal to grant a march permit, the refusal to allow porta-potties; all of these were tactics that you'd take against the "enemy" to make conditions unpleasant for him/her. Unfortunately, that kind of deterrence was bound to fail. They would have been MUCH smarter to say, "okay, these people are *going* to come, what can we do to handle the situation and make it go as smoothly as possible for us and the rest of the traffic?" NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly is a complete idiot. (Among other things, he's claiming there were only 100,000 people there. Dude, there were 100,000 people on the ONE subway car we rode over on! ;) )

Anyway, to sum up getting there: Friday night, mom and I drove to New Haven and stayed with family. It was cold. My great-aunt Lil baked a lemon cheesecake in a chocolate crust. Saturday morning, mom and I drove into Manhattan and left the car near the home of the people who were putting us up that night, on the Upper West Side.

Then we hopped a bus for downtown to join the rally. ( And then things started getting interesting! Full Rally Report Here )

And then we went back to the home of the people who were putting us up, and we had dinner and did random stuff and went to bed. And then on Sunday morning we had breakfast and made our obligatory pilgrimage to Zabar's, and hit the road. We got home around 6pm.

( My general overall impressions of the rally )

Basically, the whole thing was amazing. I've been to a lot of rallies, but I've never been as excited and energized by one as by this one, despite the cold (although my feet may never forgive me ;) ).

Mom had her digital camera there and took many pictures of the crowd as well as many of the gathered cops. I'll try to get hold of her pix and post 'em for y'all to see in the next few days.

Rally pix, take one

Here's my first set of rally pictures from my mom's digital camera. These pix are all 800x600 so I'm just posting links rather than the images themselves. Click to view:

Me (left) and Becky (blunaris). In the distant background, between our heads, you can see the stage where the celebrity guests are speaking/performing.

A great crowd shot on Third Avenue.

The scene immediately after the cops swooped in and cut us off from the rest of the crowd, including our friend Carl. My mom says she can see Carl in this picture, but I can't spot him; he might be the guy in the striped hat immediately underneath the "Walk Out" poster.

I'm pretty sure mom has more pix, so I'll try to get them from her and upload them for y'all. Stay tuned.