This morning I decided to head on out to Madison and witness the Teacher's Union Protests first hand. I wasn't able to spend the entire day, but did spend several hours there, both inside and outside the Capital Building. I decided to go not as a protester, nor as a political pundit, but instead as a neutral photographer.

But before I show the pictures... some observations:

• Given the sheer numbers of people, I was amazed and heartened by how civil everyone one. Yes, everyone was loud. There was lots of chanting and yelling, but nothing coming close to violence that I saw.
• For people interested in numbers... I can only estimate that the Union protestors outnumbers the Walker supporters by 4 or 5 to 1.
• The Union protesters used their numbers to their advantage, and counter protested around where the Walker protesters were and tried to disrupt. The Walker folks either couldn't, or didn't attempt to do the same that I saw.
• The Capital Police and other Law Enforcement were extremely professional and did a great job (and you don't hear me say things like that very often).

And with that, you can see all the photographs I took in this set on Flickr: