9/12 Downtown Fort Worth Protest March & Elsewhere

Growing up in the northwest I was used to seeing protests and protest marches and demonstrations. I remember being up there the week of the 2004 presidential elections. In Tacoma you'd see groups of people holding signs at key intersections. Bush signs on one corner, Kerry signs on the other.

I remember going up to Mount Vernon the day before the election, getting off I-5 at the exit that goes by the Skagit County Courthouse. There were a lot of demonstrators, including the one you see in the picture.

About a year after I moved to Texas I was up in Washington, in Seattle, and there was a huge protest march. I don't remember what it was about, but the wall of people went all the way from Westlake Center to the Seattle Center. Which means nothing to someone unfamiliar with Seattle, but that's a lot of people. The Fort Worth equivalent would be a wall of people walking, filling Main Street all the way from the Convention Center to the Stockyards.

I remember when I saw that Seattle protest march, remarking that I wonder why there are no protest marches in Texas, where there seems to be a lot that might raise some group's ire. Several years after that I was quite impressed with the huge demonstrations, here, in support of our Hispanic population.

On Saturday, 9/12, under a heavy rain, there was a rally/protest march/demonstration in downtown Fort Worth. Reports vary as to how many attended. Many reports seemed to downplay the event, to the consternation of those who experienced it first hand. As so often happens when you have eye witness experience, the media version will be at variance to some degree. That is always annoying.

Well, as happens so often these days, the Fort Worth 9/12 event was caught on video. The video seems to validate those who claim the media downplayed the number of people marching in downtown Forth Worth on Saturday. It looked totally peaceful. I saw no Fort Worth Gestapo. I thought they'd likely be out in force with their whacking sticks and tasers.

Below is a YouTube video of Saturday's 9/12 marchers. For those of you not familiar with Fort Worth, that parking lot they are marching around is known as Sundance Square. I think. I've never actually been totally sure what Sundance Square is...