It was encouraging to see so many new faces there–new to me, anyway. Some told me they had on entered or reentered the activist arena after the election of Trump and the recent refugee and traveler bans.

Other than an inquiry from a Capitola cop who drove up in a car to on my arrival to ask if I were responsible for the protest (which I wasn’t), no police showed up except in passing patrol cars.
Regular honks from other cars and trucks seemed to indicate strong sympathy.

With few exceptions the men present were there with their families. The overwhelming majority of those gathered were women. Virtually all participants were “white”. It was an enthusiastic and friendly group. I arrived around 10 AM when there were only a handful of people, and left around 11:30 when the protest had grown and was still going strong.

I distributed the attached flyer, and interviewed a number of the folks holding Black Lives Matter signs.

The interviews will be played tomorrow on Free Radio (streams currently at http://www.freakradio.org and archives at http://radiolibre.org/brb/brb170219.mp3 (about an hour into the audio file).