Protest Collages from Saturday's Hands Off Event

 I got to the Berkeley protest site a few minutes early and people were already holding up signs along Sacramento Street, which runs alongside the north BART train parking lot. I joined them, alternating holding up my sign with taking photos of everybody else's signs. The next time I looked back towards the station exit, there was a wall of people, covering the entire parking lot and flowing onto both sides of Sacramento. I love the spirit of these protests. Despite the news saying the protests consist of mostly older people (as if our protests counted for less somehow), here there were also quite a few college age people, families with young children, a group of probably high school students who regularly protest what is going on in Gaza. I didn't fully agree with or always fully understand some of the signs, but I added all to my photo collection. Though most were hand drawn, it was not an event that handed out the same signs for everyone to carry, people must have been looking at online suggestions because I saw people's versions in photos of protests elsewhere.

When I go back over these signs during the week, combining usually 6 to a collage, taking off excess parts and figuring out how to overlap them, choose a background that makes the images seem more united and adding a frame to enclose the collage, all this is an opportunity to review the sentiments conveyed and appreciate the people who came out in public to express them. I became fascinated with trying to include little extras that extended outside of the main images, like the outlines of the hands holding the posters or flags flying. Not everyone was a happy camper....do avert your eyes if a few well chosen curse words offend you.  I also strategically placed a bright green poster to prevent you all from seeing something you might not be able to forget.  :-) 

Without further ado, I bring you.....

The penguin and the poop poster above is my contribution. I am already thinking about what my poster will be for next Saturday's protest.

I do not think the things that are being requested/demanded in our protests will be honored by the parties in power. But I want the world to see that some of us were not fooled by, and do not approve of, what is going on. Though there were a lot of snarky posters, mine included, the outrage and fear we feel is real. Words have power, even if they just become a footnote in some future historian's dissertation in the collapse of the American experiment (or, better idea, a dissertation on how such a collapse was narrowly averted)