Rally To Restore Sanity / Keep Fear Alive | Washington, DC
 

You all know about the rally that was Saturday in DC. There is already one thread about it on the forum and will soon no doubt be more. Here are my pictures.

The rally caused Metrorail to break its all time Saturday ridership record.
We knew it would be super crowded, so we avoided transit and got there on bikes. We had out of town guests with us, so we hired pedicabs.



Obviously I didn't take this picture, but it's interesting. It's also useful as a reference.
I was standing approximately on top of the "S" in West Seaton Park, near the right side of the blue area.



Here was our vantage point, with no zooming.



These guys have got the right idea.



After some musical entertainment, the Myth Busters guys came out to run some experiments on the crowd.



Comparing the crowd reaction to instructions given over the microphone versus instructions given over the jumbotons.





Jon.







Stephen. If you look closely in this first one you can see the real version up on the stage.





And now, some signs.

Finally, a 360 degree panorama.

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http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1419/5133759463_c79f04c9e5_o.jpg

THAT was cool. Thanks for posting those!

i had a blast at the rally. lots and lots of very creative and hilarious signs out in the crowd. and of course stewart and colbert were awesome, as were the numerous special guests. the cat stevens/ozzie osbourne/OJ's peace train/crazy train/love train bit was outstanding!

great pics cirrus. you and i weren't too fat away from each other considering the ridiculous size of the crowd.

Wow, you must have arrived super early to get such an awesome spot. Imo, the Metro wasn't bad at all, it didn't seem like anyone had to wait for the next train due to crowding. Thanks for sharing!

We got there about 10:30.

The secret to big National Mall events is that people always crowd the outer perimeter, because they give up too soon. It looks crowded, so people just stop rather than moving forward all the way. If you push through into the middle you can often find decent places to stand.

You just have to develop a healthy scorn for out of town tourists, and assume they are always doing something wrong. ;-)

Thanks for sharing!

Cirrus-- with all due respect, the photos are excellent but this rally is perhaps one of the most ridiculous things in quite a while (although a welcome change from the Glenn Beck corporate-sponsored hate-fest in August).

The election is tomorrow (four days after this rally) and how many of these people who attended were phone-banking afterwards or helping with Get Out the Vote efforts for candidates that will support public education, investing in infrastructure, clean energy, and closing tax loopholes that encourage jobs to be created in China, not here in the US?

Here's the New Republic's take on the rally:

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/78806/can-liberalism-thrive-satire-and-common-sense

Of course it's not ridiculous. You are missing the point.

The point of all big rallies is to guide the media narrative and generate enthusiasm. The topic of the rally doesn't matter; the only point is to get on the news. Specifically, the point of *this* rally was to divert the national media narrative away from endless stories about how enthused tea partiers are, and to give liberals a reason to get enthusiastic about something themselves.

Every liberal who sees a news story about this rally is reminded of the election as surely as if they'd gotten a call from a phone bank.

By putting a massive liberal crowd on every TV and internet news outlet in the country, Stewart essentially phone banked the entire country. That's a whole lot more efficient than doing it one phone call at a time.

... Of course, it only works if your rally is big enough to get mainstream attention and you don't make yourself look like a complete jackass in the process. The big WTO protests a few years ago generated more sympathy than opposition for the WTO, because the protesters were so unlikable.

i attended the rally and if i had not, i would not have been involved doing any of those other activities on saturday afternoon anyway. i probably would have just gone for a bike ride or something. for me, the rally was simply a time to laugh and mock our national media outlets with like-minded individuals. i'm not really all that political of person, though i do fear and hate theocracy, which i guess makes me a lefty these days, but i'm pretty politically agnostic on the big economic issues.

SteelyDan:

No offense to you but this is exactly my point (if I hadn't made phone calls, personally, I'd have gone for a bike ride). I don't think many of the people who attended realize what is at stake in this election. We've several candidates running this year who loudly call for privatizing education, eliminating Social Security, etc... John Boehner/Agent Orange was campaigning for someone in OH this weekend who likes to dress up and play Nazi (http://toledoblade.com/article/20101031/NEWS09/10300401) . It's this apathy that is going to lead tomorrow to be an absolute disaster for anyone who cares about funding for transit, high speed rail, clean energy, or other important issues.

well, i'm clearly just not as politically passionate as you are. the rally was a great way for me to point and laugh at our ridiculous media outlets in this country.

Steely Dan aside, do you honestly not see how putting 200,000 liberals on the front page of every newspaper in the country combats voter apathy?

Do you honestly think that is less valuable than leaving spammy voice mails on people's cell phone, one call at a time?

Honestly, yes. At the Glenn Beck corporate rally, I'd think nearly every person who attended will vote tomorrow. I'd be surprised if more than 1/3 to 1/2 of the people who attended Saturday's rally vote tomorrow.

The false equivalency is also nonsense. One party is just a little more shrill than the other this election.

i can't speak for everyone at the rally, but i'll ABSOLUTELY be voting tomorrow. i vote in every election, primaries too. now, i might not vote for the candidates that you want me to vote for, but i'll definitely be voting.

Did you even read my first reply? It's not about the people at the rally. It's about the people back in Ohio who see it on TV. It's about providing a reason for them to be excited. You can't complain that one party is doing well because it's making more noise this election, and then criticize the other party when they make noise. For goodness sake.

Also, for the record, given that the Stewart rally was two and a half times the size of the Beck rally, even if only half the people vote it will have generated more votes than Beck's.

Honestly, the fact that you're in this thread talking about whether the rally was enough to get out the vote is itself proof that it was successful, because after all: here we are talking about voting, because of the rally.

Every sentence you type in this thread is a sentence you wouldn't have typed if the rally hadn't happened. The rally is riling you up, despite yourself.

I thought this was the Photo forum...

Nice pics Cirrus!

Looks like it was a blast, wish I could have attended!

@Giovanni:

This isn't ridiculous to say at all. Republicans are leading Dems by 8-10 pts this year on the generic question of which party they prefer, in part because of a huge enthusiasm gap between the GO(B)P and Democrats. Young voters, especially, are disaffected and sitting this election out: http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=1112 . To quote someone on another of these threads, when we wake up on Nov. 3 and have a Speaker Boehner, Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority leaders, and Congress filled with Ayn Rand-disciples who see any spending on infrastructure as a creeping Marxist-Leninist plot to make us more European, I hope you won't be complaining.

Serious issues are at stake this election. The surface transportation reauthorization legislation will be debated by the next Congress. We need people in Congress who will provide dedicated funding for high speed rail and will provide adequate funding to maintain our transit systems. The Republicans have vowed to cut all domestic discretionary spending to 2008 levels.

Determination

I had fun with the birds.

yeah... 200,000 people rallying for a cause won't send the message :whip: (sarcasm)

honestly, how many voices do you need then? i was getting so many political calls i signed up for the do-not call registry (unfortunately it takes a month so i was still getting calls up till yesterday)

anyway, thank you steely and cirrus for going and representing people like me (who couldn't go because i have work and take care of my son and can't afford to fly his family across the country). and thanks for the pics. looks like it was a lot of fun and i love those signs!

coolness

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It's pointless to argue about now, but as I said on Monday, voting by young voters was abysmal. I still think this rally, while humorous, certainly wasn't the best use of time three days before an election. The PA Senate race and the OH governor's race were both decided by a margin of two percent. Having a few thousand more people making phone calls or canvassing instead of listening to the people from Mythbusters on stage would have been a far better use of time.

"In fact, Democrats held onto moderate voters while losing independents. What hurt them most was this brute fact: Voters younger than 30 made up 18 percent of the electorate in 2008 but only about half that on Tuesday, according to network exit polls. This verdict was rendered by a much older and much more conservative electorate. Yes, there was an enthusiasm gap. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/02/AR2010110206384.html

"In 2010, Democrats still crushed Republicans among the under 30 vote, albeit by just 20 points. But the over 65 vote went Republican by a massive 20 point margin. What's more, in today's election, senior citizens constituted more than twice as high a share of the electorate compared to voters under 30. In 2008, the young were 18% of the electorate, and the old were 16% of the electorate. In 2010, the young were 10% of the electorate, and the old were 24% of the electorate."

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/78875/the-old-the-young-and-2010#comments

And maybe they'd have lost by a lot more if the biggest media story the weekend before the election wasn't one that excited liberals.

I was there. The highlight for me was the surprise appearances of Cat Stevens and Ozzie Osbourne and their hilarious sing off!