Butterfly man' joined thousands of other protesters on the streets of SF

Check out the pictures of me, Lauren Pillsbury-Mask of the Mask of the Goddess and Nicole Savage from S.F.Heart at the San Francisco protest with Joan Baez and Martin Sheen.

Winging It For Peace

Many of the marchers at Saturday's peace rally in San Francisco wore whimsical costumes or carried colorful signs.

Nation rallies for peace

From San Francisco to Washington, D.C., from Paris to Tokyo, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the world's streets Saturday to protest potential military action against Iraq by the Bush administration and its allies.

In Washington, where temperatures hovered in the mid-20s, as many as 500,000 protesters rallied outside the Capitol, while in San Francisco tens of thousands of peace activists marched up Market Street from the Ferry Building to City Hall.

The rallies drew people of all ages, races, religious denominations and political persuasions -- many of them saying that this was their first protest.

In San Francisco, peace activists started their march up Market Street at 11 a.m. and started arriving at City Hall at noon to listen to speeches by local and national luminaries.

Among them was Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who has gained allies and admirers since her vote on Sept. 14, 2001, as the lone dissenting voice in Congress against giving Bush open-ended authority to wage war against terrorists.

She took the stage to chants of "Barbara! Barbara!"

"The silent minority has become the vocal majority because of you," she told the cheering crowd.

The protest's organizers, a group called International ANSWER, estimated the crowd to number approximately 200,000. Police estimated the crowd to reach 55,000.

Lee invoked the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday is being celebrated Monday, urging the crowd to help eradicate the "axis of evil -- poverty, racism and war."

"It's not too late for the administration to heed our call," she said. "It takes leadership to resolve conflicts peacefully. It does not take leadership to drop bombs."

Butterflies Not Bombs at SF Rally

"When I marched in San Francisco, it was with Alan Moore's
Butterfly, and the mask of Sophia. As we walked, I thought of the rebirth of the Sacred Feminine. It can seem our efforts are small in the face of what is occurring now, but I believe we have entered a new millennium that brings a new paradigm. It seems no coincidence that the conflict raging now has it's roots patriarchal fundamentalism, be it on our side of the Atlantic or theirs. We saw the plight of the Afghani women, and now war menaces what was
once the homeland of Inanna and Isis. A friend of mine, Joel, is a rabbi who has lived in Israel. I shall not forget his comment that it "is time for the Shekinah to return". We are bearing the fragile seeds that will continue to take root around us. The Goddess serves life, the return of balance to the earth, our communities, our flesh, our children. Please accept my gratitude for "dancing your prayers", and bringing the living Goddess into the world."...Lauren Pillsbury.