Some friends from work and I took a ride to the Statehouse in Trenton, to support the public workers at their rally. We are unemployed because of a seasonal winter layoff. So none of us were blowing off work, regardless of you hear in the media. We were there on our own, not on any official union business or anything like that. But we all feel if the public unions are broken the few remaining private ones like ours, will be next.
The designated parking area was at the Trenton Thunder minor league baseball stadium. There was a line at least 250 feet long of people waiting to take buses or smaller vans to the Capitol. Unlike us, most of the people were teachers or state workers. It was raining kind of hard at first. After a while a woman came by and announced that the buses were not leaving State Street, (she didn't know why), only the vans were running. She said we could walk, but there were no sidewalks along busy Route 29. A lot of people were walking along the backstreets to the Capitol. So we followed the people in line in front of us, crossed the highway and walked along through the neighborhood. A few people in cars waved (yes with more than one finger), and a few people from house windows shouted encouragement. I've been in that area before, but don't remember all the streets, so we just proceeded on faith that those in front of us knew the way. So we walked and walked and turned left, crossed a bridge over the train tracks, back across the highway and finally saw the Statehouse dome. So we're not lost! Just before this the rain stopped almost as if on cue. By the time we got there, the rally was in progress, we missed the first few speakers. There was a really big crowd! The rain had not deterred very many people. There were so many people by the Statehouse and in the street we couldn't get near enough to see the speakers, we were near the corner. But we could hear the words. So that was good enough. There were people with signs representing several different unions, mostly Communications Workers. A guy walking through the crowd handed us Communications Workers of America signs. I forget the exact wording, but something about different unions being united with each other. I thought that was totally appropriate, considering we belong to a different union, but we wanted to help. Quite a few hand written signs as well supporting the teachers. There was one small group that every time a speaker made a point they would blow Vuvuzelas. I didn't know what to make of them at first, were they cheering or heckling? But because they were not making the noise over anyone speaking I decided it must be support. It was a very well behaved crowd, as far as I could tell. It started to rain again just as the rally was ending, and we started our long walk back to the car. On the way back we saw some opposition demonstrators,the only ones we noticed all day. We were looking for a bathroom, and there was a hotel. Some people were milling around in front of the entrance and I noticed one sign said something about "no socialism", and another said something like "what are you going to do when the taxpayer's money runs out". Kind of interesting how they were in front of the hotel. I wonder if they were staying there? From how far away were they? We decided to look for another bathroom, just to avoid trouble. That was about the extent of the tea party types we observed, so I would be very skeptical about any reports of a massive show of support for the Governor. We made it back to the car without incident.