It’s been kind of interesting to be reading the many opinions being expressed in the blogs regarding the effectiveness of protests. Here’s my protest experience from last night.
Word came to me through email a few days ago – Arnold Schwarzenegger would be appearing at a private fundraiser at the Lafayette home of former Dreyers Ice Cream president Rick Cronk and his wife, Janet, and the Alliance for a Better California was organizing a protest. Since there is no on-street parking available near the Cronks’ residence, protesters were told to gather at the BART parking lot to be shuttled up the road to the house.
As I approached the parking lot, I saw a small group of people with an American flag. Eureka! I’d found them. I parked my car, joined the group, took a placard without even looking at it, and started to make small talk. After a few minutes had gone by, I looked at my placard – “GO FOR IT, ARNOLD!” Acckkk! I had unwittingly joined the dozen or so counter-protesters! I dropped the sign and said, “You know what? I’ve made a terrible mistake. I don’t support you or Arnold.” They looked sort of startled, and I just scurried away as quickly as I possibly could.
Whew! Well, I finally made it to the right gathering spot, met up with a couple of friends, and we were soon on the shuttle. A quick ride in the van and we were there. And what a sight it was – 400 people out on this little suburban lane, waving placards and shouting and chanting just as loudly as they possibly could. Teachers, students, entire families, nurses and firefighters, lots and lots of firefighters.
Top photo is taken from across the street looking to the left of the Cronks’ driveway. Bottom photo is mostly looking to the right of the driveway. The Alliance for a Better California monitors (in the orange vests) did an amazing job of crowd control, managing to keep the driveway mostly clear. Lafayette police were stationed further inside the driveway, but the monitors kept everyone in order on the street. And every car that arrived had to pass through this phalanx of people booing and chanting “Shame on you!”
Now, one thing you need to know about the Bay Area is that even in the upscale suburbs, people are still mostly liberal. So the majority of the Lexuses and Mercedeses and Porsches that were passing by were madly honking their horns, and the Escalades with half a soccer team in the back were giving us the thumbs up. The neighbors across the street had pulled lawn chairs out into their driveway and were sitting there with cocktails, watching the hullabaloo. And the media were everywhere.
Looking down the driveway
For me, the highlight of the evening came when my friend Kathy decided to join the counter-protesters. Her sign seemed ready made for the moment. And what was so funny was that they had absolutely no idea how to react to her! Can you pick Kathy out???
But the news just kept getting better. Schwarzenegger had been scheduled to arrive at 7:00. I was able to stay until 8:00, and he still hadn’t shown up. It was already dark, and the crowd was starting to dwindle, but those who stayed kept making plenty of noise. Schwarzenegger didn’t arrive until nearly 10:00. Each and every local newscast covered the protest, and at least two of them still had reporters broadcasting live at both 10:00 and 11:00. And the coverage was reasonably extensive and came early in the newscast. All of them!
Insidebayarea.com had this to say:
LAFAYETTE — The sheer size of a protest outside a private fund-raiser for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger surprised law enforcement and even organizers Wednesday.
Organizers expected maybe 50 protesters to show up outside the Lafayette home of retired Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream Inc. executive William Cronk, where the governor was expected to appear by evening.
Instead, as many as 400 nurses, firefighters, teachers, students and others lined the narrow, suburban Contra Costa County street to protest the governor’s reforms.
And Alliance for a Better California had this to say:
We had huge numbers yesterday at a protest outside a fundraiser for Arnold, the article gets it right we were thrilled to see such strong numbers in Lafayette, not exactly a huge town. Arnold himself avoided showing up while the Alliance supporters were there. After the nurses have gotten such great coverage from their chasing him in their scrubs he has adapted his behavior to avoid the media shot of him slinking past protestors and instead either going through the backdoor, the playground or in this case making a bunch of rich supporters wait until late in the night for him to even show.
So we got to have a wonderful time, but did we make any sort of difference? Gee, I’d like to think so.