Day of Action in San Francisco

At about 5PM yesterday afternoon, the 47 Muni bus ran into a huge march turning the corner from Market Street onto Van Ness as the protesters made their way to City Hall.



The march had started two hours earlier at 24th and Mission Streets as part of a larger series of protests across California about spending cuts in education at all levels.



I jumped off the bus and joined the marchers as they made their way up Van Ness.



The group of about 10,000 was a cheerful, charming crowd of all ages and races...



...with plenty of kids who looked excited and happy to be walking up the main streets of San Francisco carrying signs and chanting slogans.



As Jan Adams explains in her inside account of the march at "Happening-Here," it really is all about the money, and whether more affluent white folks in California want to pay for less affluent non-white folks' public education.



The signs aren't particularly encouraging.



There was a big rally in Civic Center Plaza in front of City Hall with a band and politicians and so on, but in truth the protest should have been directed at the California State Building on the other side of the street. City Hall, in fact, was filled with busy catering staff getting ready for an expensive corporate party in the rotunda that evening. Draw your own ironies.