Updates
Here are some excerpts from the speeches on the stage.
Keystone Excerpts Stage from mimi on Vimeo.
I loved especially this moment. Gives a new perspective on the CIA, if you listen to "Cowboy and Indian Alliance" singing "CIA". There is one happy smiling McKibben in the background. It was really an awesome atmosphere. You can hear the wind and how I was barely capable of holding the camera.
Indian women singing fist up from mimi on Vimeo.
Dancing, singing, shouting - sounds and images from the march. It was fun.
Keystone Marching from mimi on Vimeo.
And here you have the end of the rally, the precious moments of the "Circle Dance" and Casey Camp's last words to the crowd. Very strong and very true. Listen to her.
circle dance from mimi on Vimeo.
My original diary starts here:
Well .... it was icy cold, very windy and I admit it, I almost didn't go. At five pm on Saturday, I didn't have a sign yet. If I hadn't made a comment on dailykos about being at the rally, I would have quit. No sign, no rally. But after some back and forth, I started to fall in love with making one and ended up wanting to show it at the rally.
That turned out to be minor disaster.
I have a little camera that makes photos and videos, a Canon Rebel EOS T2i, which I use very seldom. I am no photographing enthusiast, so ... I just get sometimes an itch to document something, I wouldn't find the way I want it somewhere else.
My experience from former rallies was that without a tripod I can't take decent videos. But with a tripod you are lost in the crowd, if you are not a professional. So this time I took a one-legged tripod, but then I had my sign. How to carry the sign, the tripod with the camera and a mike and manipulate the camera's buttons all at the same time, especially, if it is so cold that I had to wear thick ski-gloves, was just beyond me.
The wind blew my sign away and I had to chase it, so just visualize me (pretty out of shape and not the youngest) squeezing my sign between my legs, holding my hood over my head in the wind, cover my face with a scarf, bumping with my backpack into other people's faces and trying to zig-zag throug the cracks of the crowd to get closer to the stage.
I couldn't move one bit. In front of me nothing but the back-sides of huge men. Holding up my camera high enough and not shake was just impossible. My whole body was shivering, my heart sank, what a disaster. And on top of that - same thing as in November of last year's Do-The-Math rally, my battery died. Back then I gave up to post anything.
This is my sign, it was too small, but with that kind of language, may be it was good that way. It says what I think though, and what I like my environment to look like ... flowery and with butterflies.
I have some photos, but unfortunately no videos yet. Anyhow they are terribly shaky, but there are some clips I would have loved to post, but they take six to eight hours to load and it just not ready.
These are the shots I am happy to have made.
Arriving at the stage, I was really discouraged and upset. I knew I wouldn't be able to shoot decent videos. But then I got all exited, because of this woman, the one who holds the sign for the Ponca Nation. I could swear I had seen this lady before. In my memory she looked like the actress in the film "Barking Waters", a film I was really very taken by, when I saw it the first time. If believed the woman on the stage is Casey Camp. (It was, C-SPAN confirmed the name it their videos).
So I thought of Carter Camp and made these shots. I took a video of her and the other American and Canadian Indian women, but so far I don't manage to upload the videos. (Too large).
I really regret if I won't manage to post them in the next couple of days, because she spoke the last words of the rally and I loved what she had so say and how she said it.
On the left Casey Camp, Ponca Nation, and on the right Canadian actress Evangeline Lilly, the name of both ladies in the middle I couldn't find out yet:
On the right Jacqueline Thomas, Chief of Saik'uz First Nation
Senator Whitehouse slighly amused watching the crowd:
Oh, oh, may be it was this man, who made the Senator ... grin a little bit?:
No wonder, there is a warning, with those kind of temptations:
I wonder, if he:
believes in what this sign says:
But this man makes no fuss about never, ever investing in the Keystone XL Pipeline project:
And this one doesn't need no frigging investing advice, he knows it all anyhow:
Yep, be warned, very serious terror-corpocrats out there:
Who wouldn't get pissed off about all the trash if it would be piled up in your neighborhood ?
You can't even say "Frack You" to all of this brown, oily, slicky, icky stuff because see what happens, if you do:
Well, here comes some serious sacrifice ... poor baby ... it's a cold, bad world out there:
Let me tell you, that stuff is getting at me and how often do you feel like her, scared and left shaking in the cold:
When this happens, it comforts me to see some friendly folks get active:
And look at her, a Veterans wife:
She held up this sign, that read on the back:
So true:
Why don't we all follow their footsteps:
That's a photo for Navajo:
Yep, it's not easy to be green, but we must:
because there are:
That's it, isn't it:
P.S. I will update this diary, if I have the videos ready.
Wed Feb 20, 2013 at 8:54 AM PT: I have added some videos to my original diary. For those who can stand the shaky quality it might be fun to look at.
