I took Emma and Mazie to the rally and march for immigration reform on Monday. Pick up didn’t go quite as smoothly as I’d hoped and Emma had to threaten Mazie to get her out of the gym where they normally spend Monday afternoons. Mazie, my semantic-loving clone, corrected me whenever I told her that we have to make sacrifices when it comes to things we believe in: “You’re making me sacrifice.” This exchange brought me back to the June 1982 Saturday morning when my mother actually forced my brother and me out of bed (I remember a fair amount of screaming) to go to a massive anti-nuke rally on Second Avenue.
Apparently, fighting about rally attendance is one of those family traditions
We stopped at Starbucks for a little marble cake and chai (bribes work–Mazie stopped complaining about the sacrifice once she got the bigger half) and parked at Guadalupe and 13th. (Over the past day, everyone who hears I took the girls goes, “Where did you park?” I include this in case you too were wondering.) We walked over to the Capitol, stopped in for a free pee (is there anything better than those restrooms in the Capitol?) and headed out the south door DIRECTLY into the speakers area.
At first, it was a lot of waiting and trying to figure out what different chants meant and moving an inch here and an inch there so people could move by. We saw Jim Swift “borrow” the custom painted U.S. flag (traditional on one side, bright green stripes instead of white ones on the other) that he showed on KXAN that night.
I’ve been looking for pictures that really show what it was like. There aren’t so many out there. My friend Prentiss Riddle of apprendizdetodo.com put out the call to all bloggersand photographers; his post is here. There’s a fantastic picture of everyone streaming out of the Capitol in Austinist today.
However, according to Mazie, none of the pictures we’ve seen so far are any good, since she’s not in any.
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