"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Patriots in San Francisco

by Lee

Before we get stuck into the pictures, a few ground rules.  As before, please feel free to use these pictures on your own blogs.  I only ask two things in return:  that you download the pictures and host them yourself (don’t steal my bandwidth), and that you give a link back to my site.  And if you’d like to donate a buck or two to help out, the tip jar is always available.

Many have speculated that 99% of the people living of the Bay Area are a bunch of America-hating leftist drones.  My experience today proved that hypothesis correct, because the group of patriotic Americans I was with this afternoon—that patriotic 1%— was anything but the type of societal detritus comprising the two recent San Francisco anti-war rallies I attended.  (See here, here, and here.) Since I moved to this area over four years ago I have never felt such a sense of companionship as I did today.  Being a patriotic conservative in this area is not the easiest thing to do, and it was good for all of us to realize that we are not alone, and to kind of revel in that communal sense of frustration. 

I didn’t bring a flag or a sign, simply because I wanted my hands free to take pictures.  My friend brought his American flag, however, and he unfurled it as we walked from the parking lot to the rally.  Less than a minute later a guy in a BMW drove past and honked his horn, giving us a big tumbs-up sign.  We took that as a good omen.  A minute or so later an Asian cabbie did the same thing.  We were two for two as we hit the rally site.

At any rate, since a picture is worth a thousand words, let’s take a look at some pictures.

The rally began at noon outside SF City Hall, which you can see in the background of the picture above.  My friend and I got there just before noon, and there was already a sea of American flags.  The turnout was, to be honest, bigger than I thought it would be.  My completely uneducated guess would put the crowd somewhere in the 800-1000 range, but I could be mistaken.  At the time the picture above was taken there were probably 400 people there, so it got quite large as time went on.

I spent a little time talking to a few of San Francisco’s finest.  I asked them about the protests of the past few weekends, with the riots and all.  They made no bones about the fact that they were pissed off that, after all they had to go through to keep the peace, the district attorney decided not to file charges against any of the rioters.

A little while later we happened to see these four cops wearing flag bandanas on their heads.  I asked if I could take their picture, and they gave me permission.  As I walked away I hear one of them say, “Shit, I hope our boss doesn’t see that.” In deference to them I have blurred their faces.  I wouldn’t think that any of these guys would face repercussions for simply being patriotic, but this is San Francisco, after all.

As many of you know I am dual citizen American and Australian, so it was nice to see so many Australian and British flags also being waved.  The fact that these two nations have troops on the ground in addition to the United States was not lost on the organizers.  The podium behind which the speakers stood bore the flags of all three countries, which I thought was a classy touch.

A number of the signs being waved were from the families of those serving in the military.  Many of those speaking at the podium, including the organizer Alfredo Najera III, spoke of their family members who are serving in Iraq.

The signs were all of the type shown here: civil, patriotic, humorous, and in stark contrast to the Bush = Hitler signs that I saw plastered all over the “peace” rallies.  It’s ironic that the “peace” crowd compares Bush to Hitler with such abandon, yet the pro-America rallies do not do the same for Saddam Hussein, a man who by any objective analysis is remarkably similar to Hitler in many ways.

But, this is San Francisco after all, and there were a number of left wing anti-war lunatics who simply couldn’t let a few hundred like-minded people get together to express support for our troops and our president.

This woman was the first “peace” activist to go down there and scream at people.  After going back and forth with some of the rally attendees the police came over and broke things up.  The organizers of the rally had a permit for the area in front of city hall, and they asked the police to remove people who were disrupting the rally.  All the police did was ask her to move off to the side, not to leave completely.

The pictures above show what happened.  On the left, holding the torn sign (it was torn when I got there) is the woman in question.  On the right is the same woman, surrounded by the media, all taking down her information on their notepads.  I am only guessing here, but I believe the fact that this woman was “silenced” will be the main focus of any coverage the local media give to the rally.  Such is the way the “objective” media in this area report the news.

Here’s another group of protesters, who were more or less civil.  They got into it with some of the rally attendees a few times, but as far as I could see they pretty much stood off to the side, as the police had requested.

One of the highlights of the day was meeting one of my readers, Amy McGrew.  (Yes, that’s me on the left.) Isn’t she a cutie? And that brings me to another point.  The women at this event were, by and large, significantly better looking than the skeevy, pierced, tattoed, hairy-pitted man-haters that were all over the anti-war marches I attended.

I walked up next to the stage and snapped this picture of the crowd.  You can see that it had grown rather substantially from when I first arrived.  It was truly a wonderful sight to witness.

Update: I’ve created another post where I’m going to link to any press coverage about today’s rally I can find.  If you want to check it out, click here.

Update 2: The San Francisco Chronicle has posted their article on the rally, and it seems that Mayor Willie Brown wants the federal government to pick up the tab when “peace” activists decide to riot and vandalize.

The last time I posted pictures the discussion in the comments section was intense.  Over 300 comments were left, which added greatly to the time it took to load the page in.  I am therefore creating another post specifically for comments.  If you want to leave comments to the pictures, you can do so by clicking here.

Comments

<< Back to main