Around a thousand people are here right now at the move on and union joint rally downtown at city hall. It's a good turnout for a last minute event, and three energy is great. People are pissed off. The organizers gave set up this really with a bunch of boring speeches by the usual union leaders and politicians. One of the politicos, krekorian, made a mistake and said that cuts were inevitable. Sorry, but people know what's up. The super rich have had their recovery. Our politicians need to grow some spine and get the money from the super rich. Even democrats want to balance this budget on our backs when the rich are flush with cash.

A big pro choice contingent of hundreds of marchers came to support. They know what's up too. The right wing oppressors want to treadle us back to the nineteenth century.

One big surprise was the big turnout of iatse members. They are a middle class hollywood union. Private sector in one of americas more profitable sectors. This could signal that the middle class may be ready to unite with people who earn less even if they work just as hard.

Dozens of motorists are driving by and honking their support. They should learn to park and join in! Out of the seats and into the streets.

People are also milling around, bored by the endless speeches. They are ready to march and fight for something. They could be ready to fight for freedom for the activists being targeted by trutanich. They might be ready for more.

The LA Times blog says it's 2000 people.

That's probably more accurate. There was that influx of pro-choice activists, and there was a flow of people leaving during the event.

I've since talked to people about the demo and there's a lot of discontent. They want their organizations to do more outreach to reach people who are unaware of the scam happening in Wisconsin.

One old-timer activist said he'd never seen so many Hollywood union people at one of these events, on such short notice. A public employee union activist was happy with the turnout.

A lot of signs were not just about "public employees are good". They were focused on pointing to the wealthy and powerful as the culprits of this austerity economy.

Pictures forthcoming.

A panoramic photo of the rally, somewhat early. Taken from the hill. The panorama software smoothed out the hill, so it looks flatter than it really was.

A short video of the rally. This is in OGG Theora format, which can be played with the VLC media player (the best media player in the world). Made with PiTiVi.