My event was meant to just be a day of photography where photographers could get together and just be photographers; to show everyone that photographers care about our rights, and to show Ian how many people support him.

I initially called this a workshop, not a protest, as that is the vision I had - and BTW still have. So, even if in your mind this may be a protest, please keep in mind that the event itself is NOT a protest. I’m just encouraging people to go and take some pictures.

That having been said, I feel a need out of fear to be very clear about the vision for this event. We will not be getting in the faces of other people there; be they event participants, police, security, tourists, or any other group for that matter. There will be no rally, there will be no speakers, there will just be a bunch of people taking pictures and discussing the issue at hand amongst themselves as they meet.

If you’re not a photographer and were planning on coming down, feel free to do so. Just remember that your vision of a protest may likely not match my vision for this event. (if it can even be truly called an event.)

It has also come to my attention that the entire Seattle area media has been alerted. I never created a press release because I never really thought this would grow to the size it has. Kudos to the blogosphere on that one I suppose!

A quick message for the media (and everyone else for that matter…): You are welcome to come, and I hope that you choose to so that the government and public can see that there are a large many people who care about photographers rights. Just read above the initial paragraphs where I make the distinction between this event and a regular protest. Please keep the normal operations of the locks in mind. We don’t want to overwhelm them; we just want to take pictures.

If you care about this message - and it sounds from your posts like you do - than help me define the event a bit further so that its intended message persists after it is over.

Several initial thoughts are:

If you’d like to help be a “marshall” than please let me know. We can get a small group together and talk it out before the event. I was advised by an activist that this might be helpful and couldn’t agree more. These people would mainly just help make sure that nothing bad happens. If tensions get high for whatever reason, we’d talk to people. If you’re a good communicator, please let me know. We can discuss everything in more depth in a few days.

I don’t envision problems or issues, but I just feel that better safe than sorry is a good credo to live by.