More pictures from Marriage Equality demonstration

Size of crowd:
Small compared to demos on other issues;
but large compared to most demos on the issue of marriage?

Perhaps marriage is an issue where
the queer community's support is
"a mile wide and an inch deep".
That is, we all sympathize with same-sex couples,
and especially with the kids in such families --
but very few of us actually want to marry?

.....

SF police video-taping 9/30 marriage march:

http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/10/1772022.php

[And why were so many cops present??? ]
........

SF Chronicle report of Sept. 30 rally & march:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/01/BABADIGEST3.DTL
............

The reason the demonstration wasn't larger was due to how it was organized.

-Few emergency demonstrations during workdays before 6pm will ever get that many people since people dont have the time to plan ahead to arrange theoir schedules around the protest.

-The corner where the crowd originally gathered in the Castro couldnt have supported any more people so its likely that people walking by who were interested in the protest wouldnt have joined once the corner fileld up.

-The protest was only publicized to a small group of people (partly because it was an emergency protest in response to Arnold's veto and not something where signs could have been placed around town weeks ahead of time)

There could be aspects of the issue itself that make it hard to get radical protesters in the streets quickly but unlike many more abstract issues (like wars abroad that may not effect protesters personally) same sex marriage has significant impacts on some peoples lives and even if you just got those people (people who need marriage rights so their partners dont get deported or so they have full legal rights to help take care of children) the protests would be huge.

Several hundred people was a reasonable number of people and I doubt the organizers really planned on getting more so for practical reasons they really coudnt have gotten too many more poeple to show up.

like, there were protests in other cities around the state. A lot of people come from out of town to the big anti-war rallies (which, like the person before me said, are on weekends or at least after working hours).

They did give a lot of notice, which I had posted on this site- it said to be ready to protest on the day of the veto and to keep in touch with EQCA for info in case the details changed.

" They did give a lot of notice"

It was posted on here and sent to Marriage Equality activists weeks ahead of time but if your comparing it with the giant anti-war protests UFP, ANSWER or NION organize, they do a lot more in terms of publicity. They had paid ads on Air America stations, posters on thousands of teleophone poles etc... Plus the mass antiwar marchs organize on a contingent basis; unions get their members to show up and people start advertsing for their own contingents ahead of time.

Compared to most protests on most issues the rally Friday was good and reasonably large. It takes months and hundreds of organizers to get a 10,000 person+ protest going and small protests they dont take as much work shouldnt feel like a smaller group showing up is any real reflection on the cause.