My email box had been pounded for weeks with "come to the labor protest in front of the Hyatt at Tasman & Great America" emails. I went to see what was going on. There wasn't much visible from the street, but as I got closer I learned that it was a big action.

     

This was a counter protest. I bet they were employees on company time. They didn't act very friendly.

     

The rope defined how close the protesters could legally get to the door. There was a police presence and what looked like hotel management monitoring the situation.

        

Protesters were walking single file, getting near enough to see the door and then turning around to clear the spot for the next person. There was drumming and chanting and so forth. It was quite loud. If the management didn't know something was going on they were simply disconnected from reality.

           

After a bit I realized that there were LOTS of people there. The San Jose Peace Center activists were one group I recognized. Another was Californians for Justice, which I believe to be a student group at one of the community colleges. There must have been several unions that were well represented.

  

I joined the queue and circulated with everyone else. The format discouraged conversation. You could yell "JUSTICE!" or "NOW!" on queue or be quiet. Every time I passed near the door I took another picture. When I first got around to there the activists that had decided to get arrested for the cause were preventing business as usual from proceeding.

  

They had a station where you could pick up water or snacks as you passed. I was carrying my favorite bottle, so I passed on that.

The next time I guess some of the protesters had been hauled off to the paddy wagon.

    

We continued marching and chanting until the counter protesters clocked out and left promptly at 6 PM.

     

This woman explained that this action was part of a nation wide set of simultaneous actions against Hyatt. There were similar actions in Hawaii, Illinois, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and several other places. It was the biggest project in the union's history. She thanked us for being part of it.

After I got on the light rail, I realized that Silicon Valley Power (the local utility in Santa Clara) was running these nice ads urging people to save the world from climate change by switching to CFL light bulbs.