Last night I got home at about 10:30 PM driving all the way back to South Carolina from Charlotte, NC and I was so tired that I couldn't bring myself to properly report on the day. I painted my face, one side bone white with a red circle in my cheek with the word Bush inside with a red bar crossing it out. I will post pictures when I develope them. I had to park a few blocks away and while walking towards the Square of Trade and Tryon I got stopped by a meter cop. He asked me questions about it and told me that he had been in Iraq and fully supported what we were doing. So I answered his questions and shook his hand and went back on my way. Upon getting to the Square there weren't as many people there as I thought there would be. But I had never done this before and didn't know how many people to expect. But the only reason it looked small was because half of the protestors were across the street trying to rally more passerbys to come and join us. There was a lot of through traffic that didn't stay the whole time but if I counted everyone, including people across the street and passer-throughs, it would have been around 104 or so. People that stayed the whole time including myself, may have been around 78. We had a speaker from the NC branch of the World Can't Wait group speak. We had members of other Anti-Bush groups speak to us and lead us in songs and chants. We had a 9/11 truth activist speak. We even had a punk band show up. They didn't perform but they spoke too, along with a young man who works for the Charlotte newspaper and an attorney who was representing the Charlotte Six. Those who were attacked and beaten and arrested during the Human Right's Event in the same area in September. We had a reverand speak to us at the end of the night. There was a woman of middle eastern descent who spoke to us about how the Bush Administration could call themselves Christian when they didn't act like Christians, and how we needed to educate ourselves. How a passage in the Bible said 'We need to teach ourselves before we teach others' or something like that and how could we teach another country about democracy and freedom when we don't have it downpat here. There were flyers and newspapers and brochures being handed out. A good couple of pictures were taken of me. One man who was skeptical of the whole thing, how we proposed to introduce peace and how we planned to make any difference at all came into our midst to ask questions and have friendly banter with me and another young man. We got to talking about all sorts of stuff like the war policies, the Builderburger group, flouride in the water being a poison, etc. etc. I quoted Benjamin Franklin to the man in response to his question about why I was protesting. 'He who sacrifices liberty for security deserves niether and if we don't show dissent then all of our rights and liberty will be completely taken away in the name of false 'security'. He shook my hand and went about his way. Most of the people there were college aged but we also had some middle aged and even a smattering of older activists show up. There were two cops overseeing the whole thing as it got later in the night but we gave no provokation and they did not act or arrest or detain anyone. Even though other Mecklenburg County police had burst into that Human Rights Event in September and mased, tasered, and beat people before arresting six of them. Then when it was all over I nearly got lost in Charlotte trying to find my car and when I found it I ended up nearly getting lost in Charlotte on all those one way streets. But in my wandering I found 49 and drove it all the way back home to South Carolina. There were no advertised protests for South Carolina as far as I saw on the net.