What, did you think I was going to be uber-serious all week? After yesterday, I thought I would share with you the lighter side of going to a protest rally with your children.
Let’s start at the beginning. I care (obviously) very much about this cause…but, I don’t get out much! The first I heard about this GLOBAL protest march was about midnight Friday night, when I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep and decided to waste some time on Facebook.
A friend of mine in Houston asked “Is anyone going to this?” and I was immediately disappointed because I just knew there would be no way I could participate; I didn’t expect my neck of the woods to have anything planned. (Sort of like Rare Disease Day…hmm…I need to get more “plugged in”, I think!)
So I was happily surprised when I clicked on the March Against Monsanto link and saw that our area DID in fact have a protest scheduled! Yippee!
Saturday morning Darrel told me of his plans to go out to some pretty places and take pictures, and I told him I was planning on going to the protest rally I had learned about a mere 9 hours prior. Good husband and father that he is, he decided he could take pictures at the rally and decided to come with.
This was an ideal protest for us to bring our kids! I mean, protesting against GMO’s is ALL about family, when you get down to it. (Health for future generations, our kids are the future, etc.) So there were TONS of kids there!
And since it was so family friendly, why not bring the family dog, too, right? So there were tons of doggies – kid friendly doggies – at the protest.
And of course, we were late. Getting two kids ready (cook for and feed one, nurse the other, shower them both, dress them both, then listen to them yell and scream for you when you lock them in the living room so you can get ready – so much FUN!) and then driving in to town for a last-minute thing, well, we got there about half an hour after it started.
People were already leaving, in fact, when we got there! Still, I don’t live in a major metropolis so the 300 or so people that came was a pretty decent turn out. Based on the number of positive shouts and horn honking we got from cars driving by, I would imagine that if more people had known about it the turn-out would have been higher.
So, we’re walking up to the crowd and the first thing Jed sees is – a PUPPY DOG!!
Can I pet him?
So he pet the puppy dog (seriously, a 2 month old puppy and he was SO cute!) while the grown-ups listened to speakers pumping up the crowd.
Zac enjoyed being there. I wore him in his Ergo and he spent most of his time trying to grab my hat! People kept stopping by us to tickle his little, bare feet and every time he would grace them with his gigantic, happy smile. He is SUCH a happy baby!
Darrel took pictures while we rallied; there were TONS of interesting people and signs on display!
Love the BIG sign!
People were lined up along the street to spread the message to drivers in the road.
And after the crowd was properly pumped, we began the march.
And the march begins!
It was a pretty decent length march through our city center; I’ve never been to any sort of protest march before, so I don’t know if this is typical but as the march progressed the pressing crowd of people began to spread out. Some folks don’t walk as fast as others, I guess, and it was a pretty hot day so I saw people resting at times.
So Darrel was able to get some shots of people along the way…
Jed loved the march! Along the way he found places with ROCKS that he kept stopping to try and gather (no pictures, as we were trying to keep moving to avoid being run over), a cool playground at a church that he begged us to stop in to play at, and he LOVED the cars honking!
He had to stop every so often to grab a cracker from the snack tray on the front of the stroller, but otherwise he nearly ran the whole time!
Eventually we returned to where the rally began. We listened to a few more speakers; if you watched the video of me giving my last-minute pep talk at the rally, you might have heard this guy speak:
The Farmer 🙂
And while we listened to more speeches, Darrel took pictures in the crowd.
Aw…get ’em started young! And so polite, too!
There were SO many people dressed up with butterfly and bee antennae and wings! Honestly, that one took me a while to figure out – I originally just thought it was creative people looking for any excuse to put on a costume! But, no, duh, Carrie! GMO’s are just now coming out as the culprit behind hive colony collapse and the massive kill-off of native butterfly species. These folks were just supporting the bees and butterflies, too!
I loved this lady!
Such a sweet smile!
Such a sweet smile, and such a sweet and clever protest slogan!
(Yes, I am a bit of a Geek myself…why do you ask?)
At the end of the whole shebang, we had to drag Jed away! Why? Because he did what Jed ALWAYS does…and found a pretty girl!
Jed being Mr. Charm, as usual!
A pretty girl AND a friendly doggie? <snort> Like he’s going to walk away willingly from that! After all, Mama, GMO’s and our food supply are important and all, but a little boy has to have priorities!!
