I was on my to work this morning when I saw a group of protestors on the side of the road. I’ll confess, I only circled back because they had rainbow flags. Turns out they weren’t rainbows for The Ghey, they were for rainbows for Make Love Not Bumbs.

This group of 30 or 40 spry retirees was conducting the weekly protest of ATK ^[1] (formerly Alliant Techsystems ^[2]). ATK is our friendly neighborhood purveyor of land mines and cluster bombs.

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Originally uploaded by swirlspice ^[4].

Strangely coincidentally, as I pulled up to the circle I saw an acquaintance of mine. She mentioned that they do this every week, and I it occurred to me that I’d actually heard of this activity before. I’d not seen them at this location in my year of commuting in this direction. I’m wondering if they rotate, or if ATK is putting folks in this newly constructed building ^[5].

They were passing a megaphone around ^[6]. Each person would introduce themselves and make a statement about how they’d been affected (the couple of statements I heard were dubious) or why they were there. They had copies of the order of the ceremony printed and laminated ^[7] and a big not-homemade banner. They’re clearly organized and practiced.