Families Belong Together Lakeland Rally w/Photos

As mentioned yesterday, I went to Lakeland's afternoon rally in support of the Families Belong Together effort that is protesting trump's inhumane policy of separating immigrant and asylum families (as well as throwing kids as young as NEWBORNS into chain-link-fence cages).

Most people I know in the area probably went to the Tampa rally - those tend to be bigger and more awe-inspiring - earlier in the day, but I heard via Twitter from Betty Cracker of Balloon Juice that it got interrupted by a late morning thunderstorm (welcome to Florida, lightning capital of the Northwest hemisphere (which should actually be a quadsphere not a hemi, but I digress)).

At our march it was mostly grey and threatening, ending up with a bothersome drizzle as we started walking through downtown Lakeland (all five blocks of it, sigh).

I figure we had around 100 people and between four to eight puppies.

I documented what I could with pics and video I am having problems downloading video off my phone damn the man below:

This fat boy looks familiar. I wore my Captain America shirt because it seemed appropriate.

I will work on getting the video uploaded.

I was too busy actually walking to get my smartphone out to record any of it, but we circled Munn Park a few times and performed a few chats.

Out of the car traffic that passed us, I would say we had 30-50 people honking their horns in favor and only 3 people being total jerkasses: one middle finger, one couple shouting pro-trump crap out the window, and one attempt at a Coal Roll exhaust blast. ALL THREE OF THEM were driving the oversized supertrucks most people shouldn't drive unless they really do haul 16 tons around work. I had to explain to a couple protesting beside me what Coal Rollers were and why they were the perfect example of deplorable trump voters. This is purely anecdotal on my part, but I figure we had a 10-to-1 balance of pro-family pro-immigrant support over the hater coalition.

I hope everyone else's marches went well. I am linking to updates that were posted at Balloon Juice over the weekend.

Keep marching. Keep protesting. Those kids need to be reunited with their families as soon as fucking possible. Our immigration policy needs to open up to asylum seekers and honest families looking for safe homes to raise their kids to go to college and contribute to our United States. We need to listen to the better angels of our nature.