PASADENA ? The 2012 Tournament of Roses brought its flowery floats and strutting bands to a worldwide audience Monday under clear blue skies, and in its wake came a scruffier parade ? hundreds of anti-Wall Street protesters.
The 123rd annual New Year?s Day event, with the theme ?Just Imagine,? flowed along downtown Pasadena to the cheers of hundreds of thousands of sidewalk spectators.
An estimated 40 million people viewed this year?s procession of 44 floats, 16 marching bands and 22 equestrian troupes on television.
This year?s parade featured Iraq war veteran J.R. Martinez as grand marshal, the children and grandchildren of Roy Rogers on a float commemorating cowboys, and the parents of Christina-Taylor Green, the 9-year-old girl killed in the mass shooting that injured U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords last year, on the Donate Life float honoring organ donors. The Greens donated their daughter's corneas.
The 2012 parade was the first in 58 years without the famed Anheuser-Busch Clydesdale horses after the company withdrew in a change of marketing strategy.
On the heels of the two-hour parade came anti-Wall Street protesters in a pre-arranged demonstration.
The thunder of the retreating marching bands mingled in the air with chants of ?Banks got bailed out, we got sold out? as the Occupy the Rose Parade demonstrators retraced about 1.5 miles of the 5.5-mile parade route before veering off for a rally near City Hall.
They carried a 250-foot-long banner that said ?We the People? and some held a 70-foot-long octopus made from recycled plastic bags that represented the tentacles of perceived corporate greed.
As the protesters marched by, some Rose Parade spectators yelled ?get a job? while others snapped photos and cheered.
Source: http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/rose-32142-view-123rd.html
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