The thing about Netroots Nation is that you never know what may take place.
So I was talking to Dan Choi on Saturday afternoon and nyceve joined us.
All of a sudden another Netroots Nation GLBT activist joined us and alerted us that Twitter messages talked about a "visit" to the Hilton by hijab wearing progressive women in response to the previous day incident. Dan Choi decided to join them, and nyceeve and I went along. All this was diaried by UnaSpenser yesterday.
I took some videos and photos which I promised to post. This is my contribution and some observations.
Here are the hijab activists and nyceve already wearing a borrowed purple hijab and a white jacket before going upstairs. Upstairs where up to 1400 right wing bloggers were meeting in different conference rooms. These ladies were awe inspiring.
Here is nyceve and Dan Choi. These two are tough cookies, trust me. I'd go to war with them any time.
Sorry about the fuzziness of the photos, I was using my iPhone while I carried some purses for the hijab heroines who wanted to have their hands free. They were ready for anything.
We all wore the orange NN badge straps. The Hilton was full of the green strap RightOnLine types.
Dan and I right before going upstairs. This is one of the things I love about Netroots, you get to meet with real activists and sometimes you can move forward ideas. Dan and I exchanged info about some projects we have in mind. But we had no idea what to expect from the RightOnLine types. It was uncharted waters for me to say the least. Remember their blogger had been arrested the day before.
So up the escalator we all go;
As you saw, they wouldn't let us go beyond a certain point so we stopped and the women decided to make a stand and speak;
Finally, they kicked us all out of the 2nd floor and we went downstairs where I caught this local Fox News interview with Dan;
This memorable event was one of my NN highlights. I'll diary about other highlights later on.
My observations;
1. Dan Choi, a courageous gay activist and war vet veteran joined a group of courageous Muslim women to crash and speak out at a wingnut convention. Talk about a coalition. But it makes sense.
2. nyceve and I fight for Medicare for All (single-payer). Now I know what a fighter for justice she is.
3. The wingnuts wore a lot more jackets and ties. many looked like they could have been to NN instead, but many looked very stereotypical (if you know what I mean)
I would love to hear from all of you about who is who in the videos and photos.