Signs of Our Times: SF Peace Rally Expressed How Most Americans Feel Inspiring people-power signs from SF Civic Center rally on August 26, 2017, when tens of thousands marched to reject hate and racism

Posted on September 2, 2017 by Jonathan Greenberg

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On Saturday, August 26th, thousands of Californians rallied for a ’Peace, Love, and Understanding” event outside San Francisco’s Civic Center. Tens of thousands of others turned out for a number of other peaceful marches and rallies around the city.

What follows is a pictorial of a dozen of the many signs of our times on display during the unusually hot and sunny day; a day which turned out to be an impromptu 50th anniversary happening in the spirit of San Francisco’s 1967 Summer of Love.

Before the photos below is a video of Bree, the 23 Year old Mexican-American Californian holding a “U Hate Me I Love You” sign. Bree, a human resources manager who lives in San Francisco, said that she started the day fearful of her safety because of the attacks in Charlottesville. But then, with the support of her best friend, she decided to take to the streets to stand up to hate despite her fear. “This is the year 2017; we can make this change!” Bree says, and then, channelling Alan Ginsberg, adds, “Just the idea of love: I feel like it’s really a movement; it’s really going to push us in the direction that we need to be to really understand each other.”

(a version of this pictorial also appeared in The SonomaIndependent.org)

Jonathan Greenberg

Jonathan Greenberg is the publisher and project editor of the Maui Independent. He is the founder of Progressive Source Communications, which publishes the Maui Independent and the SonomaIndependent.org. Jonathan is an investigative financial journalist with 40 years of experience with national publications, including Forbes, The Washington Post, The New York Times, New York, Town & Country. Mother Jones and The New Republic. During the past few years, Jonathan wrote four of the most widely-read exposes about Donald Trump’s career published in the Washington Post. Jonathan was the notorious Forbes 400 reporter who taped two long calls in 1984 in which Trump pretended to be John Barron. Jonathan’s Washington Post expose about this was the subject of monologues on Colbert, the Daily Show and Seth Meyers. Jonathan has appeared live on a dozen major news shows, including on CNN with Chris Cuomo, Erin Burnett and Don Lemon, on MSNBC with Ari Berber and Ali Velshi, and NPR's On the Media. A fuller bio and links to Jonathan's work can be found at JonathanGreenberg.com. Jonathan is a new media entrepreneur and was the founder of Gist.com, an acclaimed Web 1.0 company that won the first annual Webby Awards in 1997. In 2007, Jonathan founded Progressive Source Communications, the parent company of Maui Independent and the Sonoma Independent. Progressive Source is a public interest communications company that creates multimedia websites, videos and digital advocacy campaigns that build public awareness of solutions that serve the common good.