| While I live in West Virginia, I thought it was important to show solidarity with the people next door. Ohio's Governor Kasich is of the same ilk as Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Michigan's Governor Snyder. He seems hell bent on signing SB 5 into law, a bill that would gut collective bargaining rights for public employees. Many of the people who came to this rally were teachers, firefighters, police officers and other workers who will be affected by this assault on the middle class. Many steel workers and coal miners and other union members and families were there in solidarity.
There were a wide range of speakers at the event. Several were teachers and educators. One very energizing speaker was from the firefighter's union. Members of the NAACP were also there in solidarity and spoke passionately on why this is a CIVIL RIGHTS issue and is not just about public sector workers or unions. It's about the right to organize, to assemble, and to seek redress of grievances. These are first amendment rights that shouldn't be denied to anyone.
Here are some of the pictures I took at the rally. It was really a very fired up group of people.
Author's Note: Guys, I'm really sorry. I don't know why but for some reason all of these pictures are getting cropped to 4:3 in the html code from photo bucket, while they were taken in 16:9. That's why they look off center and weird on the page. I've tried fixing it but I must be doing something wrong. I've used this before to put pictures in diaries and have not had this problem. Someone who is tech savvy...help? In any case, you can click on the pictures and see what they should really look like.
As you can see, despite the local papers (Weirton, Wheeling and Steubenville papers are all owned by the same right-wingnut company, Ogden papers) insisting that Ohio Valley residents didn't care much for Move On's message, there was a packed house.
The firefighter's union guy was really fired up. Sorry I couldn't get a better photo of him, but he never stopped moving!
Then there's this younger firefighter. A little less fired up, but it's people his age who are going to suffer most from the gutting of public education.
Edison Local, Martins Ferry and other Ohio Valley high schools are big rivals on the football field in the fall, but all the schools of this area were united in common purpose tonight!
I don't want to mess with these guys. Does Governor Kasich?
Sorry #5, it's nothing personal. You didn't asked to be hooked to an awful bill.
NAACP spokesperson.
Are you ready to sign up and help the cause?
We Are One
Working America
Move On
Feel free to post more links to groups that will get you involved in the comments.
I have a couple videos from this event, too, but I have some technical stuff to iron out. If anyone knows an easy (and cheap) way to convert .mov files taken by my camera to .avi files that I can use in Windows Movie Maker, your help would be appreciated.
And now the links to the other great diaries about these rallies all over the country tonight!
Bellingham, Washington
Blogger Ace Nelson describes his first rally!
Westerville, Ohio
Minneapolis, Minnesota
More to come! Feel free to share your own diaries or stories. I'll keep adding links if I missed any or if people keep writing more! Share your story!
Again, I want to apologize for the off-centered and weirdly cropped pictures. Normally I would wait to publish until I'd fixed it all, but I wanted to collect all the Defend the Dream diaries into one place so everyone could see that this was going on all over the nation tonight! |
