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Bans Off Our Bodies / Abortion Rights rally
Sunday, May 15th, 2022 02:42 amI woke up earlier than planned today, so I made myself a sign for the rally after all.
I made it a sandwich-board style sign, with 2 pieces of cardboard (cut from a box) linked on their top corners with a cord. I printed* my simple message, "Keep Abortion Legal" on 2 pieces of paper and taped them to the front and back cardboard pieces. This sandwich style sign was comfortable and conveniently left my hands free. (One minor issue was that I didn't link the sign bottoms with cords, so when the wind blew, a couple of times the back sign twisted around a bit.)
[*I manually printed the letter outlines with a pencil to get the words spaced well across the sheet. Then I filled in the letters with a black marker. But the the letters still weren't as dark as I wanted. So I scanned the page onto my computer and edited the image to make the letters solid black (using IrfanView's "Replace Color" feature). Then I printed that image out twice, onto 2 pieces of paper. ]
There were quite a lot of people at the rally. I'd estimate several hundred. Many people in cars driving past waved and honked their horns in support. I didn't notice any counter-protesters.
Wearing my signs really helped me feel a part of the event. Without the signs I would have felt awkward, but with them I felt like I fit right in with everyone else. I didn't see anyone else with sandwich-style signs like mine; most people were holding signs up in their hands. I did see one person with a single large sign hanging from a cord around her neck.
Wearing my face mask, which conceals my mouth, I didn't even feel very self-conscious that I wasn't joining in on most of the chanting. Many other people on the side I was on weren't doing the chants either. We were mostly waving back at people in the passing cars; whenever a car honked, many people would yell back "WOOOOOOO!!"
The rally went on for about an hour and a half after I arrived. Towards the end, the crowd moved back from the street and towards the steps of the capitol as some speeches were given.
I made it a sandwich-board style sign, with 2 pieces of cardboard (cut from a box) linked on their top corners with a cord. I printed* my simple message, "Keep Abortion Legal" on 2 pieces of paper and taped them to the front and back cardboard pieces. This sandwich style sign was comfortable and conveniently left my hands free. (One minor issue was that I didn't link the sign bottoms with cords, so when the wind blew, a couple of times the back sign twisted around a bit.)
[*I manually printed the letter outlines with a pencil to get the words spaced well across the sheet. Then I filled in the letters with a black marker. But the the letters still weren't as dark as I wanted. So I scanned the page onto my computer and edited the image to make the letters solid black (using IrfanView's "Replace Color" feature). Then I printed that image out twice, onto 2 pieces of paper. ]
There were quite a lot of people at the rally. I'd estimate several hundred. Many people in cars driving past waved and honked their horns in support. I didn't notice any counter-protesters.
Wearing my signs really helped me feel a part of the event. Without the signs I would have felt awkward, but with them I felt like I fit right in with everyone else. I didn't see anyone else with sandwich-style signs like mine; most people were holding signs up in their hands. I did see one person with a single large sign hanging from a cord around her neck.
Wearing my face mask, which conceals my mouth, I didn't even feel very self-conscious that I wasn't joining in on most of the chanting. Many other people on the side I was on weren't doing the chants either. We were mostly waving back at people in the passing cars; whenever a car honked, many people would yell back "WOOOOOOO!!"
The rally went on for about an hour and a half after I arrived. Towards the end, the crowd moved back from the street and towards the steps of the capitol as some speeches were given.