Interesting day today

I met the Marathon Pundit, John Ruberry today and a congressional candidate Joel Pollack who is running for Congress against Jan Schakowsky at the tail end of a tea party rally across the street from City Hall. I got wind of it from Ruberry's blog earlier this week.

The protest was about the government bailout of ShoreBank last month. If you want to know more about the position against ShoreBank here is a flyer for you to check out.

Click on scan for larger resolution!

Then I followed Ruberry and another friend of his, Paul Miller, to another rally near LaSalle and Monroe. This is a rally Alan & Kfir of Protest Warrior would've been happy to see.

Israel supporters shouting down the very vocal free Palestine Group. Not to say that I've heard it all from supporters of the Palestinians, I will said that the Israelies were definitely vocal calling for Hamas to Free Gaza, to stop terrorism and other slogans.

BTW, Ruberry during this time was largely running around getting pictures. For sure you got to move around to get the story. He even asked if I had my camera with me but was still running around at the moment.

I got a couple of pictures with my mobile phone but my regular camera well I made sure I brought it with me and this rally would've been perfect. It's just that I left without batteries. Anyway here are a couple photos I could fire off although due to storage issues I'm largely loathe to take many pictures on my mobile phone anyway. As soon as I get a Blackberry that issue will be rectified.

Only sign I managed to photograph of Israeli activists

Then I got this shot of the Palestinian crowd across the street

Anyway it was a few minutes of observing the scene and chants and for the first time the presence of the Chicago Police Swat Unit in green fatigues before I told Ruberry that I was heading out. Besides I wanted to go to the store so that I can enjoy tonight's Black Hawks game against the Philadelphia Flyers. It's not one to miss since this could be the game that the Hawks will clinch to win the Stanley Cup.