laramie

I made it over to the Capitol for the protest scheduled to start at 11a.m. today. I was able to drive to within a few blocks, park, and walk the rest of the way.

There were a lot of people there - nothing like the 50,000 suggested on websites I checked, but thousands. There were people of all sorts: young, old, different races. Lots of protest signs.

I wore a pink top (I figured if there was any violence pink tends to be a soothing color and might help. I spotted a whole group of people dressed in pink standing on the hillside immediately in front of the Capitol building. I asked if I could stand with them, and helped hold one of their signs for a while. The group is called Code Pink, and they included a number of the puppeteers from the May Day Festival.

Several puppets wore crowns like those of the Statue of Liberty, with writing on them saying things like, 'I Miss America,' and 'I Miss Clean Air.' One lovely young lady wore little but a pink slip, with a label reading, 'Give Bush a Pink Slip.' There were a lot of signs saying, 'Make Out Not War,' and large banners declaring for peace.

Unfortunately, by the time I'd been there an hour, standing in the hot sun, I heard that it would be another hour before the Code Pink group got to the stage. I knew I'd never last that long, (I'm unduly sensitive to too much heat and sun) let alone long enough to march to the Capitol after the rhetoric was done. I headed home early and have been following the action on TV and internet, since.

There's a story here:
From The Minnesota Independent
The anatomy of a march: Veterans for Peace event ends in arrests
http://www.minnesotaindependent.com/6394/the-anatomy-of-a-march-veterans-for-peace-event-ends-in-arrests