Hugo Chavez Support Rally Today at Civic Center

Wow, I saw this too and got the exact same flyer! I work at City Hall and the "Viva Chavez" rally was out there during my lunch break, around noon. But, there weren't that many people there.

I was at the protest too and I'll tell you what I noticed. None of the pro Chavez protesters were actually from Venezuela while practically all the protesters against Chavez were from there. And in response to the last comment regarding being legally elected.......Bush was legally elected too and we all know what an Asshole he turned out to be. Given enough time he could have changed the rules enough to be voted in for a THIRD term with large numbers regardless of what anyone thought. I guess that's th benefit of being in control.

There were, I think, 2 or 3 protesters against Chavez. The rest of them were there to support Chavez.

CORRECTION: THE RALLY WAS ANTI-CHAVEZ

Approximately 40 people demonstrated against Chavez on 9/4/09 at San Franciso's Civic Center. Only 2 pro Chavez people arrived on the scene. Perhaps it was one of those two who spoke to you.

You can verify with the San Francisco police department records that the demonstration permit was for an anti-Chavez rally (title of demonstration: No Mas Chavez).

This against Chavez demonstration was part of a world-wide demonstration:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112572897
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8239340.stm
http://www.nomaschavez.org/

Um, the protest was PRO-CHAVEZ. I know what I saw. I saw a guy in a white, button-down shirt in front of City Hall handing out flyers (the one that I scanned and posted above). There was another woman standing with the group of people flying Venezuelan flags who was yelling "VIVA CHAVEZ!" and "VIVA LA REVOLUCION BOLIVARIANA" and she had a pro-Chavez sign. There were 3 or 4 people carrying Venezuelan flags.

And, I walked past the main group, where the guy was handing out flyers and where people were holding a long banner (on my way to lunch) and at the same time, across Civic Center Plaza, in front of the statue of Bolivar, there were three MORE people handing out pro-Chavez flyers.

There were anti-Chavez protests happening around the world; that's true. From the media reports, not that many people came out to those protests. But, in San Francisco, the opposite was true -- this was a PRO-CHAVEZ demo. I counted five people handing out the flyers I posted above -- two with the crowd and three on the other side of Civic Center.

I think this is an attempt by a right-winger to try to co-opt the pro-Chavez demonstration. Believe me, I was there and I saw it.

One more correction: as much as I wish there were 40 people there supporting Hugo Chavez, the actual size of the crowd was only 15-25 people, including the 3 people standing on the other side of Civic Center handing out pro-Chavez flyers. Unfortunately, I didn't hear about the pro-Chavez protest at all, I just happened to run into it on my way to lunch. Otherwise, I would have gone. I did attend the last pro-Chavez demonstration in San Francisco and there were easily 100 people there. But even 100 people is small by SF standards ... you need at least 1000 people to make it a real SF protest.

...indybay eds have removed your post elsewhere claiming your rally was the real deal.
I've been to a lot of demos where two sides are present. No point in arguing after the fact about who had more people there.

When you are in SF, you are IN pro-Chavez territory!

We need to study up more on what is happening in Latin America and not let the corporate media distort our perceptions before we have a chance to investigate ourselves. Being humble, we can learn!