The Republicans are coming to town!!

No more running away. It’s time to stand up and fight back the only way we know how — peaceful protest. So that’s what we did.

The protest drew over 40,000 people to St. Paul according to organizers. Being one of the 40,000 that’s a very believable number — in fact it could be much higher. I’ve rarely seen so many people all in one place, but everybody was really peaceful in our march. There were so many good vibes and peaceful cops that I was almost bored! It’s great that the cops were restrained for our march. Many anarchist groups were not so lucky. Here’s a story told in photos:

Police form a line against the anarchist group trying to take an authorized route.

Fred Phelps (of the supposed Westboro Baptist Church) thinks god hates fags…and you and me and everyone else. What an asshole. He sent his family out to protest…everybody. They managed to piss people off pretty rapidly. In fact there may have been some sort of confrontation…

This guy may have been injured after a confrontation with Fred Phelps’ family. He was being helped away by his friends.

Luckily Bush, Cheney, Condi and Rumsfeld were captured before they could do any more damage. … Wait, are those puppets? Dammit, they’ve eluded us again!

Hopefully Bush will be in jail before this kid grows up.

These guys were pretty cool. Apparently they are called The Rude Mechanical Orchestra.

The crowd masses before the march begins.

The crowd begins marching away from the capitol.

Meanwhile the river of people flowing towards the Xcel Center appeared endless. I think the first people reached the Xcel before the end of the march managed to leave the Capitol. That’s how many people there were.

Lobbyists For McCain! These guys have a message for Obama supporters — “No You Can’t!” These guys were hilarious. Yes, they were kidding.

These guys weren’t kidding. They were part of a small group of counter-protesters who were there to support the war while implying the troops would rather achieve victory than come home now. Umm… maybe you should ask them why they donate so much money to Obama and Ron Paul then, dudes.

There were approximately 30 to 40 of these hardcore pro-war Republicans there to greet the 40,000 of us who respectfully disagree. The 1,000 to 1 ratio makes me wonder if the few war supporters left are able to openly support the war only because of the Media’s cheerleading. If they knew they were so outnumbered they might start to question some of their assumptions.

The police mostly stayed out of the way. Many of them were just there to block off roads and keep the marchers on track. By staying out of the way they made sure tensions stayed low and nobody felt threatened.

Some of them looked at bit concerned at times. The crowd could’ve easily torn these guys limb from limb if we were so inclined. We weren’t.

The biggest worry the cops had was keeping cool. This guy looks like he’d rather not be wearing his dark, hot, heavy uniform. Can’t say I blame him.

Every now and then the cops would interrupt the protesters so they could march through and do…. what? I dunno. Seemed like they just liked making sure they were still in charge.

They herded us into the Freedom Cage, as we called it. It was a corridor of steel fences designed to give us the impression we were near the Xcel Center when were in fact a long distance away, especially considering how many obstacles you’d have to scale in order to get there.

This is as close as we ever got to the Xcel Center. Close enough to shake our fists but not much else. Not like they give a damn what we think anyway.

The Freedom Cage steered us back towards the state capitol. Boy did we ever feel safe and secure inside that Freedom Cage.

This guy was his own personal free speech zone. He was the safest guy at the whole protest. The wires protect him from excessive liberty and independent thought.

Here Bush and Cheney have tied up, Lady Liberty, ripped her shirt off while strangling her and then proceeded to drag her through the street. I’d say this protest was pretty sick except that it’s a dead-on metaphor for what Bush/Cheney has done to our country and our civil liberties. This last 8 years has been like a slow-motion snuff film.

Puppy abuse? Maybe, but he seemed pretty happy to be there. This red, white and blue pup was one of many patriotic ensembles. The protesters were not ready to cede patriotism to the Republicans; that’s for sure.

The Constitution of the United States of America: Rememeber this thing? We need to bring it back online.

There were a lot of people there! I was never able to get the majority in one shot. I guess we’ll never know how many people were there, but I bet there could’ve been more. I’m guessing only 1 person showed up for every 10 people who hate the Bush regime and the idea of 4 more years of this crap. What can we do to change things?

“Peace Begins with a Smile”. Man, I hope she’s right.

Well, that’s it!. Have any other good pictures? Post them in the comments below. I have a couple more; you can check them out on my photostream on Flickr. Peace!