Santa Cruz's Sea of Pink! Women's March January 21, 2017

Santa Cruz Womyn's March January 21, 2017

Subtitle: Sea of PINK

Behind in my homework, so these are right from my camera.  

Santa Cruz count: 10,000 in our tiny town (population 62,864).

Oakland: 100,000

San Jose: 25,000

Plus marches in San Francisco, Walnut Creek, Napa, Berkeley, Sonoma, etc.



CLICK ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE and read the fine print.

Also have 360-VRs.   Can text one to you if you have a VR head set.

"Our rights aren't up for grabs and neither are we."

"Queen, queer, under the control of no man"

"Make American Kind Again"

"Viva la Vulva!"

I also posted a few video clips from Santa Cruz (unedited).  

But first, some commentary on the huge success of the national, turned international, marches: 

There were so many levels of semiotics going on there, right down to the pink hats all being kitted/crafted.  And what I loved best was that for AT LEAST ONE DAY, one day in at least a year+, all the headlines were dominated by LOVE instead of hatred, bigotry, violence, carnage.  --all the headlines of every major network across the globe, except one -- and that one seems to find the very word destabilizing to its entire modus operandi. 

The other thing I loved is, it wasn't just a message to mysogynist creeps everywhere, including the ones in the WH, I think it also sent a pretty strong message to PUTIN.  This is exactly the OPPOSITE of what he wanted to see happen. He wanted to see us as a nation, Left, Right, and Center,  tear ourselves apart from within. He wanted to see us trembling and retreating.  Instead, we were hugging, dancing, blowing bubbles, and celebrating La Feminine.   I love this SNL take: http://cnnmon.ie/2jEY3Zd

It sent a message counter to the bs, troglodyte, machismo tone of power-over and destruction that is being employed by men like T and Putin, but also women like LePen and KellyAnne.  It sent a message that the machismo bs destroys itself like a burning building, whereas love attracts like moths to a candle.  And it feels a lot better inside. 

When the Right goes into fear, they grab for their guns, buy tanks as cars, barricade themselves in with their teee-veeees, and dig themselves into a self-perpetuating feedback loop of internal terror.  When the Left goes into fear, we reach for EACH OTHER.  

And it aways makes me scratch my head, because meanie demons like Ann Coulter always blather on about the "godless Liberals," and though many of us may choose to put our faith in science, secular humanism, and/or any number of pantheons that differ from hers (using the whole globe and all of history as a menu)...

...isn't reaching out to lift each other what anyone with Judeo-Christian roots (no matter how they affiliate or don't now) learned in SUNDAY SCHOOL?  "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," and among you.  And I am sure other spiritual paths have similar sayings.


 Heaven is dancing and blowing bubbles and feeling a sense of interconnectedness with one another. Hell is news commentators screaming over each other their faces turn red, and tanks in the streets, like T wanted to do at the inauguration, but the army said no.   

(And I thought the only thing I got out of Sunday school was a collection of stories that helped me tutor Medieval Art History classes. Little did they know I was learning some pretty good activist strategies, heh heh heh heh.  ;) 

Maybe the reason the Right fills those big box McChurches is they are just slow learners on a lesson that is easy to hear, but admittedly hard to perfect, so they have to have it drilled in every week.  And it still doesn't stick. 

On coming together to lift each other: You know it's a state of emergency when Catholic nuns, Planned Parenthood, sex workers, women in hijabs, and Latina little girls all stand on stage together for common purpose.

"Best signs" from San Francisco, as rated by SF Gate:

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/best-signs-Womens-March-protest-San-Francisco-10874428.php 

De La Cour Ranch, Eastern Sierras near Lone Pine, California, December 27-28, 2016

De La Cour Ranch, Eastern Sierras near Lone Pine, California,  December 27-28, 2016

with Indra, Alex, Kiran

On our trip to Manzanar, we stayed at an organic farm/ranch.  We had propane heat, but no electricity.  So we played board games by battery light after dark.  It was so fun!

In the morning I went for a high altitude run in the crisp, quiet mountain air, and Kiran learned to feed the farm animals.

We found a Tesla charging station for our zero-emissions trip at the Western Film History Museum. During the WW2 era, a feature film a month was shot in the Alabama Hills, between Lone Pine and Manzanar (which are about 6-8 miles apart).  Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, John Wayne, Cline Eastwood... They were all there.  One episode of Star Wars was shot there, too.

Alex tried to charge the car from the barn...good thing there was a charging station in town at the Film History Museum!

Manzanar National Historic Site, Eastern Sierras, California, December 27-28, 2016

Manzanar National Historic Site, Eastern Sierras, California, December 27-28, 2016

with Indra, Alex, & Kiran

To learn more about Manzanar, I recommend these sites:

National Park Service: https://www.nps.gov/manz/index.htm  

NPS online Manzanar Museum:  https://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/manz/index.html

Ken Burns mini-documentary: https://blog.manzanarcommittee.org/2009/07/18/manzanar-never-again-released-video-by-ken-burns/

"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."  Google attributes that famous maxim to at least three possible figures.  Wait, aren't we already repeating it? (<-- a 1927 film history moment, a sound sync experiment.)    Where do we stop the train?

Hopefully before we reach the point of what we did to Japanese Americans during World War II.  I would say "long before," but clearly we have already past that marker with pledges of walls, registries...

Something we didn't learn much about growing up on the East Coast was the Japanese internment camps--the term concentration camps is debated--here in the West.  After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the FBI started rounding up Japanese immigrants, their American born kids, and their kids' kids.  More than half of the people in the internment camps were second and third generation American citizens.  (Gee, no one like that in MY family, eh?)  And they were completely innocent. 

Our entourage could have made a good Visitor Experience poster for Manzanar at the dawn of the Trump-Pence era:   an Arab-American (me), her Jewish friend since high school, his Mexican-born girlfriend, and his 9-year-old son with a mom from Southeast Asia. "Er, how worried to we have to be?"   The visitors' center was surprisingly crowded for a place so remote, so I guess a lot of people were thinking along these same lines.
 

Here is one of the things that struck me most:  Back then, rational people said the round ups and camps could never happen.  The Constitution would protect people.  This is America.

This was the counter point: (CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE):

"You may think that the Constitution is your security--it is nothing but a piece of paper...it is nothing at all, unless you have sound and uncorrupted public opinion."

close up...

And with that intro,  I present our trip to Manzanar, ONE OF ***TEN*** JAPANESE INTERMENT CAMPS IN THE WEST.  We spent about 2 hours over our two days in the visitors' center, which contains remarkably well designed exhibits.   Unfortunately I did not capture any of the immersive audio for you.  

On our second day (which was warmer), we also spent about 3 hours exploring the barracks, mess hall, gardens, grounds.  

CLICK ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

The roots of racism...

Politicians and labor leaders stir fear of "outsiders" taking jobs away from white people 

(click to read larger)

Visitors can select ID tags of detainees and follow their story through the exhibits.

Below is the story of a newspaper editor.

a sample classroom

What happened if you went outside the fence?  You got shot.

Orders for those Americans of Japanese ancestry...

What my mom would hate most -- no privacy!  Even in the loo.

(click image to enlarge and read)

President Harry Truman

Get this -- after Japanese-American people were rounded up, they were required to enlist in the army to serve the country that confined them to pens like animals!  Some people rebelled and said, um, excuse me?!?!?!  Most of those were convicted of draft evasion.  Other people wanted to show how loyal and patriotic they were, despite mistreatment.

Scale model of the camp.

Continuing outside...

watch tower

one of my favorite shots of the trip

mess hall

Many landscape architects and designers in LA were of Japanese descent.  It was trendy for people in LA to want Japanese-style gardens.  With so many designers in the camps, you would be right to deduce that they built a lot of gardens to make their lives more bearable.  They used what materials they could find at hand.  Here is what remains, out in the desert.

barren landscape

the orchards...

The cemetery, with origami offerings.  

Only six graves are still here because families moved bones to cemeteries that were not so fraught with complicated memories.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— 
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— 
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. 

"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."  
The Constitution "...is nothing at all, unless you have sound and uncorrupted public opinion." So share this page widely.