READER DOUG HEINZ SENDS THIS REPORT from the San Francisco protest in support of Iranian Democracy:

I’m a 9-year resident in San Francisco and there have only been three times where I’ve personally seen a protest that wasn’t giant temper tantrum against the United States in support of some tyrannical oppresser for the sake of opposition. 1) The Cedar Revolution on the steps of City Hall, 2) the protest of the Olympic Torch in support of Tibet and 3) tonight in Union Square in support of the opposition in Iran.

Quick observations: The crowd was very large (a few thousand), peaceful, passionate and green. By mingling throughout the crowd, I learned that a large percentage of people in the crowd were of Iranian heritage or descent. Many came to the event after learning about it from Twitter (one girl organized her whole family after reading a few Tweets at work) and the age spectrum was well represented from end-to-end. People were holding up print-outs of many of the horrible images we’ve seen of the beaten, shot and wounded protesters in Tehran. The clear theme was unanimous support against the Islamic dictatorship and for democracy.

A couple of signs:

– “Americans in Support of Iranians”

– “Obama Please Support Mousavi”

– “NO to Dictatorship/NO to Theocracy — In Iran”

– “Obama Please help Iranian people NOT mullahs”

– “That was NOT an Election, That was a Selection”

Michael Petrelis has lots of photos, though his idea of a “protest babe” diverges from mine. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.