I haven't been to the postmortem / analysis meeting yet, and I missed the last several before the event itself, having participated in the fundraising phase more than the route planning phase. I was in favor of a counter-clockwise route, but the fact that it ended up going clockwise was perhaps unintentional. The newspapers are saying we were off the planned route. That's credible.
However, walking against traffic in the bus mall, all professional drivers with union sympathies, right passed the Apple Store and other centers for the more privileged work-study players, highlighted the contrasts, as we made it to our R2DToo campus. I took the pedestrian crossing to traverse the west-traveling lanes and revisited the Door Project, per storyboard. Other than that, I was free to cross paths with the march haphazardly and took breaks at both Rogue Hall and Melting Pot.
Our plan was to keep moving and not assemble on the steps of the Justice Center in quite that way, but then all these plans were before Baltimore and continued escalation in tensions through the media. Given all these storms, our relatively festive and orderly mobilization was not the unruly mob portrayed by the children writing for The Oregonian and such, i.e. journalists of low stature ready to react without much thought or reflection.
The operation was both professional and to the point, criticisms to the contrary notwithstanding.
