(One of my new favorite signs)

For those who don’t like it when the ZRC blog covers Madison-area events not strictly about Zombies, you can skip this entry, and rest assured, Zombie news is coming quickly hereafter.

I took a jaunt downtown to see the big motorcycle-themed protest ‘Thunda Around the Rotunda’ on Saturday, and thought I’d share some pictures and video with our readership. When we recently traveled to Indiana for an Atomic Age show we got several questions and comments about the goings-on up here; as has been noted locally quite a bit, the media coverage of Madison on a national level is… pathetic. People outside Wisconsin just don’t get much information about our ongoing little peaceful revolution.

To sum up recent events: at least 6 State Senate Republicans face recall elections, along with, perhaps, 3 Dems. The Democratic recalls have been marred by evidence of rather shady dealings, including outright buying signatures with alcohol, which, as it turns out, may be legal in Wisconsin.

The protests go on intermittently; our Supreme Court election is tied up in a recount and the Governor’s budget is in limbo due to court fights. In all likelihood, the recall elections on July 12th will turn control of the State Senate to the Democrats and Governor Walker will be a lame duck until his own recall election, which it looks like he will easily and soundly lose.

Which ought to show him for trying to pass such Anti-Zombie legislation.

Anyway, on Saturday there was a big pro-public sector union rally with a motorcycle theme downtown, and I went to get some shots.

The motorcycles more or less surrounded three sides of the square; I think a bunch of people had to leave as I saw police directing motorcyclists off the street and ordering them to try and find a legal parking space. At the same time, the fourth side seemed to be being kept clear, perhaps to provide emergency vehicles access if needed to the Capitol Square, not sure.

Now if I was Fox News, I would have led with these pictures of an apparently nefarious Communist infiltrator cyclist:

Finally I managed to get video of the entrance of all the bikes, coming up into the Capitol area along one of downtown Madison’s hilariously squirrelly little streets:

I apologize for the wind noise, which I took some steps to reduce at the start of the video. Basically, it’s super windy here this weekend. It’s a pain, but a fair tradeoff for finally getting to see the sun again.

The full set of Flickr pictures from Saturday is here, the collection of all Madison area protesting pics is here, and our Youtube channel which has many other fun videos is here.

Tags: Madison Protests

This entry was posted by John Sears on Sunday, May 1st, 2011 at 7:49 pm and is filed under ZRC News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.