Peninsula 350.org was talking about this big climate march in Oakland. Caroline organized a carpool to Fremont BART. I joined it. On the way up it was raining cats and dogs. I brought my new green poncho, hoping that would be enough extra rain gear. Luckily as we were rolling up Mowry the rain stopped.

     

I lost my party at the train station somehow. Ended up sitting across from Phil & Ann on BART.

First other signs I saw were this couple in the BART station at 12th St. in Oakland. That was the closest one to the start. Just up the stairs and a hundred yards away was where it started. After I got there I started seeing lots and lots of good pictures.

     

        

There was some muttering going on way over there, but most of what I saw was people connecting with old friends and making new ones. When I tracked down the "event" someone explained it was "a pre march press conference." They said the public speaking part would be at the end.

  

     

     

        

  

  

        

        

     

  

        

     

The street theater was getting better. This skit a tug of war over Governor Brown. The people power was saying "Listen to the science! Ban fracking now!" The greasy suit representing big oil was saying "We need the gas for our SUVs. Can we offer you yet another expensive trip to some exotic location and some money for a few pet projects?"

     

I couldn't bear the pain our dear Governor must be feeling. I went back to gathering pictures.

     

     

     

        

  

     

That exploding oil train is one of the more creative things people did.

        

     

  

  

     

     

  

     

        

     

        

  

        

  

     

It was really wonderful to be taking over the streets with many hundreds of friends. At that point the weather was perfect for being outside.

  

     

     

  

I have a lot of respect for this woman. She obviously put a lot of thought into what she put on her sign. Also, she carried it over her head for miles. That takes strength!

  

For just a few minutes around this point in the march it poured rain again. It was just enough to get everything wet again. Then the weather went back to being nice for a while.

        

  

     

  

        

  

     

     

  

Somebody said the singers were a group named Occupella. It was nice to be serenaded with radical music as we passed them.

     

     

The chants were something like "WHAT DO WE WANT?" Then the rest of us would say "BAN FRACKING!" Then megaphone lady would ask "WHEN DO WE WANT IT?" We would respond "NOW!"

     

     

        

        

  

On the stage there was one speaker after another. For me they were background noise. I wanted to talk to people that were far enough back and ignoring the stage.

     

Victoria is excited about her back yard chickens. Apparently they aren't quite legal in Sunnyvale. That's not a problem unless somebody complains. Because of that, part of raising chickens is enlisting the neighbors as co-conspirators. She described her chicken coop as "a joint project with the next door neighbor."

     

If more rain doesn't connect you with mother earth I don't know what does.

     

  

I think the guy in the dunce cage was a corrupt politician. People could throw things at the square target. If it hit just right it would pull the flush lever on the toilet, soaking the evil tool of the special interests yet again. There was a line of people wanting a chance to flush on him.

When Gerry saw this page he told me "The "corrupt politician" under the toilet was someone saying he was Jerry Brown.  And he was joined briefly by someone saying he was Obama." After I paused a bit he added "They were flushing on Brown because so far it seems he is ok with fracking, and the protest was anti-fracking. So it makes sense to me." Seems to me flushing a politician is a matter of voting them out in the next election, and that option has expired in Brown's case.

        

Somebody handed me this flier. No further trees were harmed by me in the sharing of the following information:

Yeah, I know. A small puff of CO2 was exhaled to move the image where you could see it. Hope the investment was worth it!

     

     

     

     

The woman in the teal coat traded me a sticker for a peanut butter and sunflower seed tortilla wrap. It was the only food I ate in the entire time I was in Alameda County. I was so hungry! Thank you my friend. Talking to her I got the sense she is looking for a life partner/home, or maybe just someone to party with this evening. I hope it works out for her. I told her if she wants to try Mountain View I'd love to put her up and see what happens. Gave her my card.

  

     

This band explained that we need to do everything with "whoop spirit".

  

They got the dancers going for sure.

All of the power used by the sound system came from the legs of volunteers pedaling these bikes. Every now and then the guy with the sign would call out "pedal harder" or "chill", depending if we needed more or less juice for the electronics. I pedaled for a while to.

     

The other side of that sign with the picture of an oil drop read "LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND", but I couldn't get a good picture of that.

        

The guy in the CRITICAL MASS DETROIT is proud to be a member of that group. He said they have been riding together for something like eight years now. He also said that the police situation for critical mass Boston was so bad that if something bad happened they would run away instead of calling the cops. It's a lot better than that in San Francisco, where the cops ride along with critical mass sometimes. What a difference!

By this time I had to go. The crowd was very thin and I was hungry and tired. What a day!