PICTURES!

To supplement my last post, I'd like to add some more pictures and a video I took while at the SONA protest.

In this video, I tried to capture the beginning of the march.  You can see all the different people with flags and banners.  At one point you can see the giant float of the President with a pig face holding to pistols to the air (only from the back but I can assure you that is what it is).  If you look in the background, you can see that they are on a regular road with traffic still trying to pass on the far side.  The jeepneys were used to block off more and more of the road as more people arrived.

This was the legal team.  They were the ones to brief all the foreigners on their rights and what they were and were not allowed to do legally.  However, everyone was ultimately allowed to decide in what capacity to participate in the march.

 The people in the middle in all white shirts with white flags are the religious group.  The priests made a wall around their marchers and were trained with how to handle the situations they could face being a part of this march.

There were plenty of great signs at the march. These are some of my favorite.

                                      

To leave the protest, we went up over the overpass to get to the opposite side of the road.  It was from there that I got some great pictures to put it into perspective.  

                                  

As you can see from above, the march goes in front and behind where I was for a fair ways each direction.  The crowd is decorated with banners, flags and signs.  The traffic is at a standstill right beside them because the line of cops has stopped them to also stop the marchers.  It's hard to see in the pictures, but the police have created a barrier up at the next overpass (thus our departure).  The police lined the side of the street in an attempt to keep the protesters confined to that side of the street and prevent them from continuing past the barrier on the other side of the road.  Many people came to the protest and this was only one of several protests going on throughout the day all over the city.  I forget the exact statistic but I believe somewhere around 10,000 police officers were brought in from around the provinces just for this day.  I am so grateful to have had the chance to walk with these people as they speak out for their rights.  I hope that by sharing this, you might consider how lucky you are, especially if you're from the US, to have the right to peacefully protest and the right to stand up for what you believe.  I hope that this opens your eyes to the injustices facing the Philippines. And I hope you enjoyed looking some of the pictures I took (and ignored any issues with the spacing...I tried)! I only went through my whole camera battery, my whole phone battery, and most of my iPod battery to get them! Hopefully more posts with pictures will come soon! :)