Never Had a Voice to Protest...

A Zombie Hides My Face.

The title and the first sentence of this blog are from one of my favorite Stone Sour songs.

It is called Bother if you are into Rock Music.

With that aside, not wanting to be tied down to the proclivities of sitting at the house, yet another saturday. I decided to look online to see if anyone was doing anything cool like protesting Syria. I happened to stumble across a group called Overpasses for the Impeachment of Obama. After reading about their cause and realizing they would be protesting pretty close to where I live, as a photographer, I was elated in the idea of stretching my proverbial "photojournalist wings" so to speak. Reading on they were only protesting from 10am-12pm. It was a narrow window in the grand scheme of things, especially when I glanced down and realized it was 9.40am.

Here is where I shall denote my political stance, or lack there of. Actually its quite complicated, seeing as how we as a nation have stepped outside the boundries of Republican or Democrat. We have become a nation sated in "Death and Destruction". Now I sit back and laugh because the punk rockers had it right all along.  All joking aside though, it is a time when "The People" are losing their voice when it comes to the power of protest. I fear that the brother and sister known as Government and Corporation have outgrown the masses. If you are still following me here, what I am saying is that we can all scream until our veins collpase, but the agenda of our protest is falling on deaf ears. So there it is, I pledge no allegiance to either side of the fence, I am here to document history and truth in the making...

Rolling up on set, so to speak, I noted that on the overpass a few people had already gathered. They were waving the U.S. Flag and Texas Flag almost as if to call attention to a time of duress. I was in the Wal-Mart parking lot getting my gear together, and I noticed some people grabbing home made signs. As I walked up to the protestors, I was surprised to find how open and friendly they were. They, at first, kept an open eye on me to make sure I was not there to crash the party. After speaking to a woman for a few moments they gave me the go-ahead to take some photos. 

What is also interesting to note, is that the woman with whom I spoke with is part of a few different protesting crowds. Seeing the locution of Molon Labe across the torso of her shirt was a quick annotation that she was part of the Pro-Gun Right culture. It was first used by King Leonidis in response to the Persian army, when they ordered the surrender of weapons. ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!! Screamed the spartans, which meant
"Come and Take'em!" Another interesting viewpoint is that age, gender, and ethnicity had no role in this protest. It was pretty cool to see people from all different backgrounds on this overpass protesting towards something that they felt in their hearts was a disservice to the American people.

                              

Again, I was taken back by the sheer hospitality of this group. It was not long before I was shaking hands with a man who went by the sobriquet of Tex. "Hi my friends call me Tex" said a man with his hand outstretched to receive a handshake from me. "Oh hey man, nice to meet you! I saw you guys on the overpass and I wanted to come up and take a few photos of you guys if you don't mind" I said as I firmly shook his hand. He went on to tell me that the reason they were up there to protest for the impeachment of our commander in chief. "Basically our country no longer fears the people, and they are turning a blind eye to the atrocities in Benghazi" Tex stated. I could see the conviction in his eyes for reason of waking up early to make signs and waive flags. I was speaking with a man who whole heartily felt that we are a nation in turmoil, or in shambles if you will.

It was actually a pretty amazing feeling seeing history in the making, and I being able to document that with my camera. I have a feeling that there will be more coming. More protests, more voices, signs, flags, and most importantly the youth of our nation. It was awesome to see a younger crowd out there standing alongside adults. If children are in recognition of the detriment that we as a public have allowed to happen, then you know something on a grand scale is on the horizon, for the future of our nation.

All in all, I was humbled by the idea of a group of people getting up on a saturday morning to go out and excercise their first ammendment right. Also, it was great to hear the immediate feed back of the passer-by's as they honked in recognition of their cause. Here are a few more photos of this lovely group of people. 

I am Martin Bravo, and if you enjoyed reading please click to follow, because I will be performing more freelance photojournalism for all to see and share.