The weather was perfect. Walking down Castro St. does wonders for the mood. Relaxed people enjoying the good weather all around.

Once again it was time to stand up to the current administration. I was there to do my part. Walked all the way from my front door to City Hall Plaza carrying my sign.

  

     

Should have gotten there earlier. It was already a hopping place.

  

     

     

I suddenly noticed there was a stage and the lady was speaking.

There were lots of us listening.

     

Lenny Siegel introduced Joan Baez.

She read us a poem she had recently written. The gist of what I remember is that Trump only had one marble left, but then it rolled out his ear and made a clattering noise bouncing on the tiles floor. Her version was way better, with nuance and humor.

           

Then she sang us some union marching songs. We were all singing "Ain't going to let nobody turn me around!" together by the end.

The next speaker was Maria from the Day Workers Center. She reminded us that in much of the world it's May Day, a time to celebrate workers. Many times in previous years she organized a May Day March to this exact spot. She was happy we could all be here together this year, because indeed many of the people from those events were here today. She had so much gratitude for how beautiful this response to the Trump agenda turned out to be.

Judge LaDoris Cordell said we were the embodiment of civic participation.

        

They had just a bit of time for some open mike. I started thinking about what I wanted to say to everybody, so I didn't catch what these people said.

        

Then it was my turn. I said "One of the reasons we got into this mess is that Big Oil and Big Cars have been buying both choices on so many ballots for so many years it's hard to know where to start on changing things. We swallowed it partly because cheap fossil fuels and mass production really were making life better for everybody. That's no longer true. Peak oil is behind us and we need to stop voting for oil companies at the gas pump."

  

After that we marched down to El Camino Real.