Rally - Really

This is the last of three blogs concerning March 4 Change 1/15/10. Here are links to the others:

• We Are Forgers!
• Insult To Injury To Healing

This won’t be the History of the Campaign that Failed.

We went to the Lincoln Memorial to say,

“Mr. Obama, We Have Your Back.”

• Simple.
• Functional.

There was nothing about how some of us do or don’t like President Obama’s stand on

• Bank
• Bailouts
• War
• Healthcare
• GLBT issues
• DOMA
• or whatever.

Just, “We have your back, Big Guy. We are proud to have you.”

This is a link to the Original Facebook Page set up by Manny Vasile, (Link) there should be a whole load of pictures going there. Here is the Wiki page set up by TekVahanna.(Link).  We had a web site setup (Link).

We tried as hard as we could.

That is ok. We met in DC on Friday under a blue sky that made you wonder where rain comes from.

OK, only a handful of us came to DC from across the country. We got better press coverage from Japanese Public TV doing a compare/contrast report on Obama’s support in DC from 2009 to 2010 and a French Radio reporter asking what is going on. These reports should embarrass those who control our party, if they have the ability to be embarrassed. When we get links to the reports, I will post them here, warts and all.

The idea was brought up the night before to have a 3 X 25 foot sheet of paper rolled out for people to sign with something positive to say to President Obama. All of us who attended, along with regular folks disguised as tourists from across the country signed on. School kids from South Carolina and New York queued up to write “way to go” with people from Brazil, Uruguay, China, Japan. I thought I saw some Korean and Hebrew script on there too. The idea was to hand deliver this to the White House after the march. (We got to the guard house in front of the White House and were told it needed to go thru the US Mail. Manny will be putting the postage on this and a sign made by Cossandra Lemon.)

A number of us spoke on the birth of Dr. King, taking turns reading The Letter from Birmingham Jail. Good writing stands the test of time. Parts of the letter could have been written last week.

The order of prepared remarks was Janice Grounds, me, and then Manny Vasile. We all talked about why we need to support Obama.  Our prepared remarks were about 40 minutes. I know Novelette (her blog http://thepollitikat.com/ ) and her daughter Nicki were recording and if they can processed their stuff to You-Tube, I will lose these videos that make us all look like moving potato chip bags.

Here are the links to the actual rally:

• LincolnMemorial_01_Intro
• LincolnMemorial_02_Vance_Carruth_Letter
• LincolnMemorial_03_MLK_Letter_from_Birmingham_Jail_1
• LincolnMemorial_04_MLK_Letter_from_Birmingham_Jail_2
• LincolnMemorial_05_JaniceGrounds
• LincolnMemorial_06_JoeTheNerd_1
• LincolnMemorial_07_JoeTheNerd_2
• LincolnMemorial_08_Manny_Vasile_1
• LincolnMemorial_09_Manny_Vasile_2 
• 
  
• Added later - Politicat's (aka Novelette) Video of Me - Better Quality!!! (Thanks)
  

We tried as hard as we could.
 
We are the grassroots that haven’t been pulled up by the cynical machinations of the power brokers.
We aren’t afraid of the

• Birthers, 
• Death Paneleists, 
• Teabaggers, 
• and the assortment 

that obscured what we wanted in 2008.

We don’t care if we are the only ones in the room saying it –
we know it has to be said.

We don’t need a second round of Hope.
We know we have to work to back up the first dose of it.

The bottom line here is: we came from across the country on our own dime to say one thing to the President:

Mr. Obama, We Still Have Your Back.

• We took off from work.
• We took time away from our families.
• We took guff from the DNC and the OFA who didn’t want us there.

Mr. Obama, We Still Have Your Back.

• We got the hairy eyeball from the Park Police who didn’t know what to make of us.
• We got looks from tourists who thought we were nuts.
• We got to meet people from across the country who believe the same as we do.

Mr. Obama, We Still Have Your Back.

• We really did feel the presence of those couldn’t make it to DC.
• There is a hell of a lot more of us out there than showed up on Friday.
• Let us back into the game; even though it looks bleak in the Congress.
• Our energies can carry the day.

Mr. Obama, We Still Have Your Back.

But you may need to make a new pact with us, because we aren’t going to put up with another 2009.

If you want more of us, show us you will fight for yourself against the GOP.
If you want more of us, give us a real fight for Single Payer.
If you want more of us, give us the real schedule for Iraq and Afghanistan.
If you want more of us, allow us to take the field against the Teabaggers.

If you want to do this with a small handful of people,

• we will keep trying,
• but we don’t know how you are going to do it. 

We don’t know how much longer we can last.