My Bestest Friend Ed and his fam went to see Obama speaking in Fort collins, CO on Sunday with 50,000 other people. He wrote up his account for someone else's blog but I am stealing it. Very exciting, the first thing he said to me was, "Wow what an amazing speaker and I only heard half of it!"
It's long, he's kind of a talker... but I'm still jealous...
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Yesterday (Sunday Oct 26), Democratic candidate for president Barack Obama spoke at two rallies in the Denver area - one in front of the capitol building in Denver (reports say that well over 100,000 people showed up for the morning rally in Denver!), and another one in Fort Collins on the CSU campus (nearly 50,000 people!). My family and I decided to go to Fort Collins for the 3:30pm speech. We knew there'd be a lot of people, since the University claimed to expect over 20,000 prior to the event. So we planned to head up there early!
We did not plan well enough! Confusion over the time caused some problems (anybody else notice their VCR's 'fell back' an hour Saturday night?), and a sudden and quite heavy bloody nose brought our expedition to a sudden detour (Natalie is prone to them, but this one was shocking -- double handful of bloody tissues, anyone?). Sometimes I think my lovely wife single-handedly keeps the tissue and moisturizer industries in business.
Fort Collins is about an hour North of our home in Thornton, and then another twenty minutes West to our initial destination. After a quick stop in Erie to pick up our mothers and speeding through lunch followed by the uber-nosebleed, Katie, Natalie, Laura, mom and I finally arrived at the South end of the bus route serving the event. Front Range Community College, where buses were queued up to take passengers to CSU campus. The parking lot at FRCC was surprisingly not remotely full. We began to think that we were in for a break since OBVIOUSLY the city of Fort Collins wasn't overwhelmed with visitors!
Not so. We rode our bus North on College Ave. into the heart of campus (see A on my map of the
East half of campus for where we got off the bus). We walked through the tunnel under College Ave as directed by our bus driver. This turned out to be a time-waster, as we ended up doubling back to College Ave. to find the end of the line (see B on map)... Quite the line, too! We were about 4 abreast, and the line ran as far as I could see down Pitkin Street. Random people would pass by from time to time grumbling about how far they'd walked to find the end of the line. One grumpy gal declared loudly "Give up, there's no way you're getting in!" Others said things like "They're cutting it off at 20,000 people and they were already to 15,000 an hour ago!" and "It's already 3:15, and you have thousands of people ahead of you. Go home." and "How long have we been in line? Seems like 3 days." Things were moving slowly because, at the entrance to The Oval, security was frisking and/or searching every person.
Yes, it looked pretty grim. It was nearly 3:30 and the line stretched out ahead of us interminably. We thought about giving up, but held fast! The decision point came a few minutes later (See C on map). We came to a fork, at which point we could see the line we'd been following, on the other side of a gap 30 yards ahead of us; and we could see all the people immediately in front of us heading off quickly to the right - toward The Oval where the event was scheduled to begin right then. Why did the line split? Where were these people going? A small knot of campaign volunteers were standing there telling us that we were to go thataway - toward The Oval. "I don't know what's going on, but go that way." Very reassuring words! Perhaps we were being led back to the bus stop?
I'm kind of a law-and-order guy. I don't take cuts. I had a short-term hard time deciding whether to follow the crowd or get back into the same line we'd been in for so long. We decided as a group to go right, and see what happened. Heck, we were already late and our line hadn't been moving very quickly. Why not?! So we hustled and followed the new route directly into the heart of campus.
Things got a little ugly when our short cut brought us into contact with The Line we'd gotten out of. We'd bypassed a significant chunk of The Line and were re-merging with The Line (see D on map). None of us realized at this point that all order had broken down at the gates to The Oval... ;-) So, a woman was standing apart from The Line, hollering at all of us (several hundred of whom had already merged into The Line) "Who are you people!? You can't cut in here!" She was all serious and indignant. I felt sorry for her, on one level, because haven't we all felt that emotion? But part of me also laughed, inside, at the absurdity of her standing there trying to hold off hundreds more line-crashers. Brave, foolish person. Tsk tsk.
Undaunted, our sizeable force invaded The Line (which was at this point about 15 people abreast). But The Line was fracturing anyway. Packs of people broke off and headed to The Oval via other routes. It was very chaotic and lots of people pushing and shoving. I held tight to Katie's hand - she's 5 years old - and I was concerned she might get scared in the crush of people. But she was actually very brave the whole time. We kept getting separated from the moms, Natalie had Katie some of the time, I did some of the time. But happily, it never devolved into fighting or people-stomping. It was as peaceful as a mob could be!
Around us, people had their cell phones out; friends inside The Oval were relaying the speech to people in line. I heard part of the speech that way: "We are the United States of America. We are a nation that's faced down war and depression; great challenges and great threats. And at each and every moment, we have risen to meet these challenges – not as Democrats, not as Republicans, but as Americans. With resolve. With confidence. With that fundamental belief that here in America, our destiny is not written for us, but by us. That's who we are, and that's the country we need to be right now."
At this point, we spotted our first McCain/Palin supporters. They were wandering around with those ironic "Country First" signs that always give me a giggle. Poor suckers. Our mob managed to spurt out a few yells and jeers which came across kind of nasty considering the vast outnumbering going on. Later I spotted some folks wielding pink 'Obama the communist' signs and sporting red hammer & sickle motif signs. Little packs of pot-stirrers in a sea of excited, amped up Obama supporters. You wouldn't catch me doing something similar!
As The Line headed North on West Drive, picking up speed, it started to feel eerily like the scene in Lord of the Rings where the orcs start pouring through the walls of Helm's Deep. A handful of campaign volunteers stood behind trash bins and barked "Don't run! Walk please!" (I somehow resisted the urge to smite them with my orcish sword.) Obama signs of the sort that get waved during speeches were scattered in the street, their paper-tube handles crushed by dirty shoe-prints. I saw a clipboard with volunteer registration forms laying among litter. Everywhere the signs of a crowd-control struggle gone wrong. (It appears, actually, that once Obama started his speech and The Oval was near full, security simply decided to let people in without searching them.)
We could hear the crowd cheering and snippets of Obama's speech coming from ahead of us. "...stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas and invest in companies that create good jobs right here in Colorado." It sounds so powerful in person, compared to the flat, over-rehearsed sound you get when watching him speak on TV. Live, it was fiery, urgent, and more inspiring. "...I won't let banks and lenders off the hook when it was their greed and irresponsibility that got us into this mess." Soon, encouraged by the amplified voice and amplified crowd, we were approaching the line of easy-ups that served as the security checkpoint (see E on map). The white canopies stood unoccupied by any official presence now, while literally thousands of people streamed through them. The Oval itself was sectioned off into multiple 'pens'. We all poured into a pen on the SouthWest sixth of The Oval.
"There's been a lot of talk about taxes in this campaign. And the truth is, my opponent and I are both proposing tax cuts. The difference is, he wants to give a $700,000 tax cut to the average Fortune 500 CEO. I want to put a middle class tax cut in the pockets of 95% of workers and their families. My opponent doesn't want you to know this, but under my plan, tax rates will actually be less than they were under Ronald Reagan."
"If I am President, I will invest $15 billion a year in renewable sources of energy to create five million new, green jobs over the next decade – jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced; jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and fuel-efficient cars; jobs that will help us end our dependence on oil from Middle East dictators."
At the opposite end of the great open space, filled with giant oaks all sporting their autumn red and gold and orange, was a rank of bleachers surmounted by a giant "CHANGE" banner (see F on map). Beneath and in front of the banner was a small stage with a lone podium. At the podium stood Barack, in his black jacket and white shirt (no tie - the FOX people like to line up this look in comparison to the way Ahmedinijad tends to dress). The crowd was massive. Since I'm just over six feet tall, I was able to see over the top of many people's heads and actually spot Obama across the crowds. My wife and our moms could not see him at all. Katie put her hands to her ears, because the noise of the crowd and the blaring loudspeakers assaulted her, but she was excited to be there and I put her on my shoulders. I don't think she actually saw the candidate, though. She's too unfamiliar with crowds to know how to orient in one. You have to know what to look for at that kind of distance. Where are the people out there looking? Where are the lights pointed? Where are the cameras pointed? What positioning of the stage would position Obama properly for photos?
"And if I'm President, we'll give every child, everywhere the skills and the knowledge they need to compete with any worker, anywhere in the world. I will not allow countries to out-teach us today so they can out-compete us tomorrow. It is time to provide every American with a world-class education. That means investing in early childhood education. That means recruiting an army of new teachers, and paying them better, and giving them more support in exchange for higher standards and more accountability."
There was a nice couple beside me; the man lifted his wife up so she could see over people's heads. She was holding binoculars, but it took her a couple of minutes to find Obama across The Oval. But she did finally spot him, and she grinned so wide! She whooped and raised an arm triumphantly. The assembled thousands roared after each statement, each proposal. Roars of approval, not roars of hatred or fear.
"There are no real or fake parts of this country. We are not separated by the pro-America and anti-America parts of this nation – we all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from. There are patriots who supported this war in Iraq and patriots who opposed it; patriots who believe in Democratic policies and those who believe in Republican policies. The men and women from Colorado and all across America who serve on our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America – they have served the United States of America."
Fifteen minutes went by so quickly; soon he was thanking the crowd, saying "...if you stand with me in nine days, I promise you – we will win Colorado, we will win this election, and then you and I – together – will change this country and change this world. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless America." And then the music fired up:
Like a fool I went and stayed too long
Now I'm wondering if your love's still strong
Oo, baby, here I am, signed,
sealed, delivered, I'm yours!
Then that time I went and said goodbye
Now I'm back and not ashamed to cry
Oo, baby, here I am, signed,
sealed, delivered, I'm yours!
Here I am baby
Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm yours
...
Katie was glad when the crowd dispersed and she could run around. People all around us were happy and not grumpy about the crowding. Those of us with cameras showed our photos around, which was nice since so many people in our part of The Oval hadn't been able to see Obama over the heads of the crowd. We spotted about a dozen SWAT officers, well armed and in black body armor. On the way back to the bus, we saw another half-dozen McCain supporters protesting Obama. No catcalls this time, as far as I could see. We left inspired and optimistic.
It's pretty cool to live in a Battleground State. Everyone should give it a try some time!
[Thanks to 'www.RealClearPolitics.com' for making the transcript of the speech available. If you want to read the whole thing, check it out here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/obamas_rallies_enormous_crowd.html ]
