Results tagged “protests”

While clearly not as important as foie gras, there's another issue weighing on our hearts and minds. Death Cab for Cutie have valiantly taken up a meaningful cause: auto-tune. The band has faux-organized a pseudo-political campaign against "auto-tune abuse in music." At last night's Grammys, DCFC showed up wearing baby blue ribbons pinned to their jackets, which they claimed was to raise awareness for their "campaign."

Perhaps it's a resurgence of energy after the post-holiday blues that galvanized city activists to gather in solidarity against world problems this weekend. There were two rallies we know of: yesterday's 1,500-strong pro-Israel rally at Temple De Hirsch Sinai on Capitol Hill, and a gay rights protest march from Capitol Hill to Westlake Center on Saturday. The pro-Israel rally was the larger and better-organized of the two; as Dominic Holden over at Slog notes, the anti-DOMA march was poorly attended and organized by a small, inexperienced group without the help of Equal Rights Washington. (Our apologies if the headline makes it seem like the anti-DOMA and pro-Israel camps had anything to do with each other, because they sure didn't.)

Expect a four-mile progression of mostly immigrant workers and the blue-collar citizens who love them. It's nothing new for immigrants (legal and illegal) to be the ones fighting for labor rights in this country. Indeed, they were a huge part of what we'll call the labor movement heyday now about a century ago.

Just Monday we were writing about how much we love farce, and here today, San Francisco plays host to a farce of global scale as the Olympic torch--a flash-point for anti-China rallies--arrives in the Bay city. (Follow all the news at SFist.) Regardless of what you think of the hosts of this year's Summer Olympic games, your position on Tibet or Uighur ethnic autonomy, or whether Western nations should symbolically protest Chinese crackdowns by skipping the opening ceremonies, we're sure everyone agrees with us when we ask: who the hell thought to send the torch through ? The city of a million different protesting special interest groups, right next to UC Berkeley, home of thousands of radical-chic college students. Yup. That was going to go well.