To conclude the series, I returned to yet another assignment from that instructor of the advanced photography class I took through IUPUI in Indianapolis.
Class members were asked to shoot a news event, so I decided to go to downtown Indianapolis on July 15, 2007, for a planned community protest rally against what many property owners perceived as inordinately steep recent property reassessments on top of a recently approved tax increase on those properties in Marion County.
I landed at the iconic Monument Circle, where Meridian and Market streets meet in the center of downtown.
The protest was well organized and advertised. Many of the people who showed up carried sundry signs bearing quips and daggers harpooning elected officials responsible for the swell of opposition. But many protestors also showed up wearing black -- either black shirts/tops and/or both shirts and pants/slacks.
One protestor wore a black robe and had a skull mask covering his/her face (see first photo below).
It is believed that people's incensed reaction to the property reassessments and tax increases that year propelled Indianapolis businessman and retired Marine Lt. Col. Greg Ballard to run for mayor of Indianapolis that fall. He won in what was considered a major upset of incumbent Mayor Bart Peterson. The margin of victory was 51% to 47%. Ballard won re-election in 2011.
Ballard was the only Republican to file for mayor in 2007, which was remarkable considering Republicans had the tax issue to wield in their favor. But most people presumed Democrat Peterson was a lock to win a third consecutive term.
But it was Republicans who wrote and enacted legislation consolidating county and city governance, called UniGov, in Marion County in 1970. And it was Republicans who had dominated elections to offices operating that government from that point until Peterson first won in 1999 and was re-elected in 2003. Peterson was Indianapolis' first Democrat elected mayor since 1967.
I arrived in Indianapolis in 1978, and all I'd ever known while living there were Republican mayors ... until Peterson came along.
On July 15, 2007, I had a field day doing my photo documentation of the rally. So many signs to zero in on, and I present the bulk of them below.
At one point, I decided to ask the people at the main desk of the 10-story Columbia Club, which is a private social club on the northeast quadrant of the Circle, if I could use one of their upper-level floors to get aerial perspectives of protestors on the Monument steps. They consented and steered me to the 10th floor, 25,000-square-foot ballroom, and that's where I was when taking the overhead pictures you see below.
