The Jumbotron-iest thing I saw today!

When visiting the area in St. Paul near the RNC Convention, I saw this large monstrosity perched between the Cathedral of Saint Paul and the Minnesota State Capitol, right on the last leg of the route the delegates took to their convention site:


What cracked me up at the time was that I instantly assumed that this eye sore was an installment by the GOP for their convention...

WRONG!

It was the work of True Blue Minnesota, who took the opportunity to exercise their free speech with constant footage of things like post-Katrina media coverage and Frontline exposes on prominent Republicans.

I suppose that is excessive technology that I can get behind...and under!

The nosy-est thing I saw today

When I was at the protests on Monday, I was humored by the three lines of participants; like a layered cake they spanned the street:


The 3 P's:
Police
Press
Protesters

The Press filled the space between the riot police and the protesters. They spent most of the time watching the police. In this shot the press are running to catch up with the deviating anarchist group.

I also noted that all of the 3 P's had camera and video equipment. All three layers were documenting the happenings, all for varying reasons, I think.

The cat and mouse-iest thing I saw today!

On Monday, a friend and I went to St. Paul to check out the big anti-war march on the RNC.

We grew impatient waiting at the rally for the march to start, so we headed into downtown St. Paul to witness what else was going on.

Prior to the start of the big march, we saw a lot of the anarchist crowd during their approved protest and the trouble they stirred up when they reached the end of their approved route and kept right on marching.

They splintered off into little groups like a bunch of mice. We saw them running up and down side streets followed by law enforcement. It was comical and disturbing all at the same time.

We saw a lot of police in riot gear and even some police horses in riot gear.



We saw this guy get pepper sprayed.

Many anarchists went off and broke windows and damaged other property. 200-some were eventually arrested that day.

Then they came out again yesterday and did it all again.