When I arrived at about 8:15 this morning (yeah, real early for me) there were about 40 protesters. We were in front of the Federal Courthouse, where I was just last week for the marriage equality case and where I've protested before. This time we were asked to stay off the sidewalk to avoid obstructing those going into the court building. Barricades allowed us one lane of the street. This was also the first time in my protesting I had to worry about the cold -- it was around 37F.
About 8:45 I counted again, the crowd had grown to about 75. By 9:15 there were at least 170, including a contingent from Occupy Wall Street in New York.
Standing on the sidewalk was this character. It is hard to see that it is a puppeteer pulling the strings of the mayor, emergency manager, and governor.
The police put their vehicles at the both ends of the block, closing the entire street and allowing us a much bigger space. This photo gives us a sense of the size of the crowd.
The crowd chanted various slogans, such as the call and response "No justice, no peace." That expanded into "We don't get no justice, you don't get no peace." With a crowd that big spread over a whole block the chanting reminded me of the music of Charles Ives. He's the guy who composed music for two and three simultaneous bands, playing different things. Yes, different parts of the line were chanting different slogans, with a few people chanting to their own rhythm.
Shortly after 9:15 the line of protesters split to walk all the way around the courthouse. The timing caught a few police off guard, who scrambled to take their places along the line of march. A few of the police seemed to be friendly with the protesters. I'm sure the friendliness was towards retired colleagues in the march. And the retirees were with us because pensions of city workers is one thing that might get chopped. There were also lots of people from various unions, including auto workers, in the crowd.
We made two circuits of the building. I'm not sure we completely surrounded the building, though were close. We then gathered in front of the building to hear a few speakers. The crowd was big enough and noisy enough that I couldn't hear what was being said. I left at about 10:00 even though one of the organizers said there was no target end time and it could last all day and all night.
I was back in Detroit for my evening shift at the Ruth Ellis Center. There were somber moments because there was an informal memorial for a couple of our kids who had been killed, one of them only two weeks ago. This was due to the violence in Detroit and perhaps not because they were part of a sexual minority.
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