Protest, part II: Substance

The program was straightforward: A series of speakers stood up on the flatbed truck and spoke out against Arnold's activities against their "special interest".

In rough order of appearance, the speakers were from the San Francisco Labor Council, the California Nurses Association, the state teacher's union, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (Tom Ammiano) and the State Assembly(Mark Leno). There was a quick visit from the world's worst Schwarzenegger impersonator, and then a firefighter and a policeman spoke as well, followed by some repeat speakers from organizations who had already sent up a representative.

As happens at a lot of these sorts of things, the speakers were long on diatribe and short on substance. That's not a complaint: I feel like once you get the bodies out and get people excited, you've already won, and it almost doesn't matter what happens at the event itself. The tone and substance of the comments were predictable, which takes nothing away from their importance: Teachers talked about the money due to the schools; labor leaders talked about the lunch-break issue; everyone talked about pensions.

Everyone also talked about the newfound sense of common cause between a number of traditionally disparate organizations.

Notable quote, from the president of a San Francisco teacher's organization (sorry, but it's hard to get names on the fly with no press packet):

"We are not 'girlie men' but workers in fields dominated by women, strong women. We won't let him demean us, and we won't let him demean the work we do...The Governor's 'fundamental mistake' is that by calling us all special interests, he has united us."

More on that theme later.

The one piece of useful information that people might not have had was from Supervisor Mark Leno, who reminded us that we can counter-petition against the special election, and that we can find out more about that at California for Democracy.

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Protest, part II: Substance

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