Have you ever participated in a protest?

[Gringo]

Sorry, when I posted this before it didn't work.

[LSparkle]

1. Went to Century Plaza Hotel

when * was here ... wanted to be as close to him as possible to scream "RESIGN"! Was a very freeing experience.

[La_Serpiente]

2. I marched right outside

CENTCOM 5, at Pearl Harbor. It the control center for the Navy's 5th fleet and the Pacific Central Command for the entire Pacific. I don't think I got so much hell in my life. The people there were obviously military people. There were about 1000 of us there and the people would be swearing at us while they were driving by. It was still a little scary, but I managed.

[JanMichael]

3. My first one was in 1985. The student body marched to the School Board...

...in support of not cutting teacher salaries due to funding problems.

In the last year?

Tampa: Anti-Iraq War; Anti-Bush.

Sarasota: Anti-Iraq War; Anti-Bush.

DC 03.15.03: Anti-Iraq War; Anti-Bush.

[carpetbagger]

4. Chinese embassy (D.C.), 1989

Always be ready for tear gas.

[HFishbine]

5. Never Mind

Misread.

[Lisa0825]

6. My first (and only, to date) protest...

was against redistricting in Texas in front of SOB Tom DeLay's local office.

[Kanary]

11. Welcome to D.U., Lisa!

Sorry, I haven't figgered out the cute little waving emoticons, yet...

Kanary, still behind the 8-ball... ^_^

[SteveG]

7. 1965

Went on my first anti-war (Vietnam) protest. I was staying with my uncle in NYC and he took me to an anti-Vietnam protest at the UN. I was 15 at the time. I went to DC in 1969 and participated in the big demo then, right after Kent State.

[Kanary]

10. Steve, I was at the "sister" protest in San Francisco...

what a rush that "Mobilization" protest was! People for as far as the eye could see!

Wish I had been taken to protests when I was a teen... lucky you, to see so young what it was about. I was soooo politically unaware then.

Have made up for it since. ~~gigglesnort~~

Kanary

[Donna Zen]

20. Selma

with bus loads that left from Cleveland. Kent State was 1970. I was one of the naked young things in the fountain outside of some science and industry building. Did you happen to catch the action?

Although that day was very discouraging to my mind. It seemed all we could think to do was protest by smoking major weed and march through the reflecting pool playing recorders.

[Ksec]

8. first one was a walkout while I was a senior in high school

to protest the war in VietNam. That was the beginning of my activist days. BTW we got detention for a week.

[Bozola]

9. maybe...who's askin'? That you, Mr. Ashcroft?

[Ksec]

13. Man that looks like Pittsburgh..

[Bozola]

21. I certainly hope not. It's Seattle.

[fortyfeetunder]

12. 8th grade

Some of us jr high types cut class to protest a local pharmacy, blocks from the school, allegedly selling drug paraphenalia. I didn't get into a lot of trouble because I ended up talking to the teacher whose class I cut (she was my favorite teacher) and we had a discussion about what I did and the consequences.

[FrenchieCat]

14. yep....3 times in S.F.

first time was way before the war...way before 9/11....

was protesting Bush.....cause I just didn't like him at all....

was a stolen election march..

There were just a couple of hundred of us......

I GUESS I WAS AHEAD OF MY TIME!

the marched in October 2002 and February 2003.

[prolesunited]

15. A number of them

and I have the pictures to prove it. And THEY probably have the pictures of me to prove it as well. ;-)

[Piperay]

16. Protest after protest after protest

some years back but I won't do it again for various reasons including my health. I am fighting instead with as much money as I can donate to PACs that fight the RW agenda.

[eyesroll]

17. I've attended a few small ones...

Picketed Antonin Scalia when he was here. Demonstrated in front of then Rep. Mark Neumann's office to protest his support of the Communications Decency Act (there's a picture of me, somewhere in the archives of the college paper, from that protest, leaning up against a police car. It looks like I'm getting arrested. I'm actually signing a parade permit.) A couple of labor rallies (www.tysonfamiliesstandup.org).

[nostamj]

18. ack! meant to vote 3 of the above!

beginning with gay rights marches in the early 80s through the 10/25/03 DC rally and march. with AIDS events, Hardwick decision, anti-Iraq war, etc. in between.

on edit: forgot about wearing a black armband to protest the Kent State shootings. that was in high school.

[arcos]

19. Yes, against the privatization of the gov ran electr and telecomm co n/t

[davsand]

22. I was lookking for an "all of the above" option.

I am trying to remember every time I've protested something. I've picked up a picket sign for everything from abortion to GLBT rights, to antiwar to impeaching bush and everything in between.

The stuff that I really remember was the offbeat activities...

Standing outside a local hospital in the snow protesting them for terminating a Senior's program that offered health care to those who couln't afford to pay the balance left after Medicare paid. We wrote "Christmas carols" for them and stood in the snow singing about the greed behind the decision that ended in seniors going withour life saving treatment.

I remember staging a mock trial for Henry Hyde for the deaths of women after he worked to end medicaid funding for abortion services. I stood--at high noon-- in the student union in a borrowed graduation gown presiding over his trial, while women "testified" about the impact of forced pregnancy on families and individuals already poverty striken...

Handing out triangles outside a GOP dinner attempting to hammer home that AIDS was not a disease of only gays and Hatians... The Illinois Gov. was speaking that night and he actually joked about getting "tri angled" as he came into the dinner.

I remember walking a picket line for a contract dispute with a hot dog in one hand and a sign in the other. We staged "lunch hour" pickets and picketed and cooked out outside. Free lunch to anybody that carried a sign for five minutes...

I just assumed everybody lived like this. Recently, I was at a Eugene Debs dinner and a singer was there to provide entertainment. She sang a song about being an activist and it really hit home when she sang about a kid asking to play any game except "Bulk Mail."

Like I said, I just figured this was how it is.

Laura