This photo was taken in Palo Alto, California on March 17. 2012.
I live in Silicon Valley. I see crazy things all the time, but most of the crazy can be categorized as the nutty professor, the insomniac entrepreneur, the overzealous startup guy or the type A person who is having a bad day. This is a place that is founded upon the principal of accepting the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the ones who see things differently and are not fond of rules, but we are not tolerant of intolerance. So, when I came across this protest-- on my way to a techy coffee shop on University avenue-- I was dumbfounded.
It's not as if I feel like everyone who lives here is a liberal, cerebral agnostic who volunteers at Obama's SF technology field office. However, I do feel that the sense of innovation and forward thinking permeates thoroughly throughout the Valley's society and, this is aggressively the opposite of that culture. I guess I should be thankful that I live in a place where this protest gathers only a handful of people and that there are far more people embarrassed, disgusted or annoyed than eager to join, but it's deeply disappointing. I am disappointed that even here, when everything is aligned for progress, that this backward mentality still persists. On some level I understand that that is a bit naive but I don't care. I want to live in a world where if you lead a man towards enlightenment that he becomes enlightened. Maybe I need to just laugh it off like this
(can't find one with an embed code!)