Signs of Our Times: San Francisco Peace Rally Expresses How Most Americans Feel nspiring people-power signs from SF Civic Center rally on August 26, 2017, when tens of thousands marched to reject hate and racism

Posted on August 28, 2017 by Jonathan Greenberg

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On Saturday, August 26, thousands of Californians rallied for a ‘Peace Love and Understanding” event outside San Francisco’s Civic Center. Tens of thousands of others turned out for a number of other peaceful marches and rallies around the city.

What follows is a pictorial of a dozen of the many signs of our times on display during the unusually hot and sunny day; a day which turned out to be an impromptu 50th anniversary happening in the spirit of San Francisco’s 1967 Summer of Love.

Before the photos below is a video of Bree, the 23 Year old Mexican-American Californian holding a “U Hate Me I Love You” sign. Bree, a human resources manager who lives in San Francisco, said that she started the day fearful of her safety because of the attacks in Charlottesville. But then, with the support of her best friend, she decided to take to the streets to stand up to hate despite her fear. “This is the year 2017; we can make this change!” Bree says, and then, channelling Alan Ginsberg, adds, “Just the idea of love: I feel like it’s really a movement; it’s really going to push us in the direction that we need to be to really understand each other.”

Copyright 2017 by the SonomaIndependent.org. Free to share with attribution

Copyright 2017 by the Sonoma Independent.org. Free to share with attributiod

Rally participant dancing with sign and Michael Franti. Copyright 2017 by the Sonoma Independent.org. Free to share with attribution

23 year old Bree and her best friend, who supported her decision to join the rally. Copyright 2017 by the Sonoma Independent.org. Free to share with attribution

Jonathan Greenberg

Jonathan Greenberg is the editor and publisher of the award winning Sonoma Independent, which he founded in 2015 to serve the public interest with insight, solutions and advocacy.

Jonathan has been an investigative legal and financial journalist with 40 years of experience contributing to national publications. His professional career began as a fact checker at Forbes Magazine, where he advanced to the role of the lead reporter in creating the first Forbes 400 listing of wealthy Americans. Jonathan has been an investigative financial and political journalist for such national publications as The Washington Post, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Mother Jones, Forbes, Town & Country, Money, GQ, Manhattan, Inc., The New Republic, and Alternet. From 2011 through 2017, Jonathan was a blogger for the Huffington Post, where his narrative-transforming reporting and analysis about subjects like Bernie Sanders, Monsanto and Native Hawaiian water protectors achieved some of the widest readership of any HuffPost writer on these subjects.

Jonathan was a Web 1.0 pioneer. In 1996 he started Gist Communications, a disruptive new media company that competed successfully with News Corp’s TV Guide Online. In 1997, Gist was one of just 14 websites in the world to be named a winner of the First Annual Webby Awards in San Francisco. Following Gist and the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Jonathan served, in 2002 and 2003, as Policy Director for the New York City Council’s Select Committee on Lower Manhattan Redevelopment, where he directed media and public policy campaigns and was the city council’s lead analyst for federal relief programs.

In 2007, Jonathan founded Progressive Source Communications, a public interest digital advocacy company that has created scores of impactful videos and campaigns to build awareness of solutions that serve the common good. Progressive Source owns the Sonoma Independent.

Jonathan is a graduate of Yale Law School's Masters Degree in Law fellowship program. A fuller bio and links to Jonathan's work can be found at JonathanGreenberg.com.