Rally and Women's March January 18, 2020

As I was saying on Facebook, I'm always grateful when rallies go beyond platitudes and chants, and I'm happy to say that I learned things at the Women's March rally yesterday (January 18), and of course it was a thrill hearing cast members of HAMILTON perform.

Cast members of Hamilton.

I'm going to post for a few days to cover some of what I learned at the rally, and forgive me for starting with the plight ot men, but one of the first signs I saw was this one:

Are these statistics true?  (We won't go into his motives for sharing these statistics at a Women's March.)

I wish I knew the name of the First Nation woman who sang at the beginning and spoke later.  More than one person acknowledged that we were on Ohlone land.

The MC was Kimberly Ellis the director of Emerge California,  She introduced the speakers, who began with Mayor London Breed, the first African-American mayor of SF, and one of only two female mayors.  Others who spoke were CCCarmen Chu,Saru Jayaraman, women representing faith activists, women representing disability and sexualilty, Malia Cohen, Shannon Watts (Fight Like a Mother--against guns), Teresa Mejia of the Women's Building.  I thought I heard the name Noemi Odai, but I can't find any reference to her online.  More on what I learned later.