Friday was dex night, so I drove up to LA and puttered around a bit, scouting a few things for future reference and experimenting with the drone, which I managed to crash into a tree. Among other things, I had planned to take some pictures of the Bradbury Building, a beautiful, restored Victorian office building in downtown LA. Unfortunately, it turned out to be closed until further notice, something its website conspicuously failed to mention.
But that was OK, because it gave me time to go outside and take pictures of the 5th annual women's march, which was focused on abortion this year. At a very rough guess, I'd say the crowd numbered around 3-4,000. As usual, it started at Pershing Square and made its way up Hill Street:
Then they made the turn onto 1st Street and then to Broadway, dogs leading the way:
By 11:00 everyone had gathered at Grand Park:
There was profanity:
And lots of signs in front of City Hall as the crowd waited for the speakers:
After a short introduction, Gloria Allred led off the speakers, later accompanied by Paxton Smith, the Texas teenager who switched her graduation speech and spoke about abortion after Gov. Greg Abbot signed a bill that effectively banned abortion in the state:
At that point, my time was up and I had to leave for other scheduled activities. Still, you're getting more here than you would from the LA Times, which ran a short wire report and a single Getty photo, even though the march took place in their own city. I guess they're bored with this stuff.
For the lamestream media, women are the Charlie Brown's Parents of the World.
It is dismaying to see how little coverage there has been of this march. It is almost as if Democrats don't care about this issue (judging by what has appeared on so-called liberal websites).
There has been some talk of breaking some deals with Christian groups and rejecting court based decisions on personal issues like this. In turn they let the state's set the laws with no extra conditions and they stop voting single issue Republican. Call them "Carter Democrats" . Or return to tradition of the DNC from 1964-80..
Or return to the tradition of Federalism up till, mostly, the New Deal.
Argue all you like about the communitarian or technocrat aspects of it, but providing a roadmap to dismantle Federalism in so many legal spaces has mostly been the disaster that just keeps on giving.
The New Deal (as the third constitution) is probably the appropriate starting point on legal grounds, but sure, ain't gonna lie that a variety of laws like Comstock, or Prohibition, laid the groundwork.
This is a very nice photo run by Mr Drum...evocative and caught the flavors of the march. Thanks for doing this, I didn't even know it was happening.
Best Wishes, Traveller
👍👍
That time of year again,
https://i.redd.it/otr6bnv839r71.jpg
Nice!
3,000 to 4,000 would seem to be quite short of the 20,000 organizers were purportedly expecting:
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/womens-march-protesters-defend-reproductive-rights-across-socal-the-nation/amp/ And the web searches I did to find that (“la women’s march crowd size”) suggested the 20,000 figure was very much smaller than a number of recent years. Whether that had a bearing on the LA Times’ coverage I am unable to say.
From that same KTLA link we get an indication Allred was hitting the circuit because she also spoke in Beverly Hills:
Mother Jones, which would be unlikely to sandbag the figures, put the numbers as “tens of thousands across the country” and mentions something like 650 rallies. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/10/abortion-rights-rally-roe-texas-supreme-court/
Which is not inconsistent with 3-4, 000 in L.A. Add up NYC, San Francisco, Boston, D.C., Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, Detroit, and 640 others and you get to "tens of thousands". How many "tens" Two?Three? More?
These Saturday afternoon events are not really effective.
Isn't it supposed to be anti-womyn or something to automatically assume that a Senator is a man?
Or are we now using the correct Latin of Senator and Senatrix? I though doing that was also bad, but who can keep track of grammar laws these days?
How the social conservative puts the best face on it,
https://www.saturdaygalleryart.com/uploads/9/9/3/3/99339056/s169895090511963746_p1094_i660_w1444.jpeg
As science advances, it gets harder and harder for abortion proponents to deny that it is an act that kills a human life that deserves to have a chance at liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Until the fetus can live on its own outside the uterus it's not a viable person. At this point at 22 weeks when there is a 0-10% chance of survival, not without medical problems though. You are of course welcome to your beliefs, don't push them on others, especially in the form of laws.
There's a distinction between a person and something that just happens to be alive. The Bible comes out strongly in favor of abortion, because it has a standard for what constitutes a person, and it ain't the zygote.
There is neither liberty nor happiness when the law obstructs a free medical decision between a woman and her doctor.
A "human life" born with anencephaly also has no real chance at "liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but the chance of psychological trauma for the parents and the risk of death for the woman are quite high.
So what is to be done with the tens of thousands of "human lives" in freezers at fertility clinics? How do you propose to give those "human lives" a chance at liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Here's the deal about marches and other demonstrations: If the media doesn't take them seriously, doesn't give them top billing, or barely covers them at all, then they never happened. It was just a bunch of ladies taking a walk on a nice fall day.
And don't tell me about all the "onlookers." How often are people even outside anymore? In the downtown areas? Standing around on Main Street? Yeah, few if any. So if the media doesn't flog the story, it never happened. It was irrelevant. A waste of time and signage.
It gets worse. If the thing disrupts traffic, occupies law enforcement, leads to looters, burglars, and vandals taking advantage, then it's 200% the fault of "the Cause", whatever it was.
The heyday of demonstrations is 50 years past. There's no longer a point.
This is by governmental design. After the boomers in the 1960s and 70s demonstrated (no pun intended) the power of the people, putting an end to a war and bringing down one -- maybe two -- presidents, the power elite saw that something had to be done. They enacted legislation requiring a permit to hold a protest. A permit!? They made it mandatory for protesters to stage their events in a fenced-in area where they have to stay penned, hidden from view of government officials, or else they are breaking the law and can be arrested. This is not an infringement on their freedom of speech, because they "broke the law" by stepping outside their pen.
At that time, protesters went right up to those who held power, and protested right in their faces. They did not apply for a permit, they did not hold a "rally" in a fenced area two miles from the Capitol or the White House.
What we do today is Protest Theater.
The "First Amendment pens" and the permitting wouldn't stop the media from covering these events. The really big deal is that media coverage is so lacking -- except when the events are accompanied by looters taking advantage.