Rally ‘Round the Candidates


What can I say. I had an eventful weekend. It started Friday when I barely made it to the volunteer meeting, I would have gotten there earlier, but it was time for Doggers’ semi-annual heart worm preventive vaccination. I got there at about ten after five, I didn’t leave until a quarter to seven. The meeting started at seven.

I wish they would have put in the directions that “headquarters is immediately next door to where Diana goes to church”. That would have cleared up any confusion I had and I would have gotten their earlier, I wouldn’t have ended up where I ended up on Saturday, so it really was a fair exchange, I think.

So I park Minnie and find my way to the fringes of a large group of people hanging around outside the headquarters. I missed the welcome speeches, but no loss there. You hear one “So Glad To See You! Thank You For Showing Up” speech, you’ve pretty much heard them all.

The people standing around where I am standing around get placed into “Group 1" and told to go “over there”. We went “over there” and met our Leader, who explained what we were going to be doing on Saturday. We were to be Counter Protester Protesters. If we saw a sign for say, a republican candidate we were to go and stand in front of it and hoist our signs to camouflage it. We were not to touch them or speak divisively of them, because after all we believe in the first amendment. If there was a problem we were to call our Leader and he would send cops or somebody to “deal” with it. We were expressly told that we were not to speak to the press at anytime for any reason. We also would not be issued the neato credentials the other volunteers would get, because we were some what undercover and it wouldn’t look good to have credentialed volunteers bullying Bushites in front of the press. We would get tee shirts ( No. We. Did. Not! ). They said to go home, eat well and get a lot of rest. Be at the event grounds 10:45 Saturday morning.

Saturday Morning

10:45 am and It was all ready hot. We gather and get put into even smaller groups. I am in Red Group. I am handed a couple of big hand painted poster board signs. The people in the regular audience showing up with signs like these taken away from them, no unapproved signs, ya know, we must stay on message. The truth was, they didn’t want any “Fuck Bush” signs showing up on FAUX news.

Those big paper signs later make for great sunshades. We were to be in the White Zone, as it turned out, far from any protesters. We sit around trying to stay in what shade there was while the secret service finished up there security sweep of the area. God, it was hot. A woman brought water back from somewhere and says it cost $2.50 a bottle. If she had waited ten minutes she would have been awash in free water. Anyway. We get cleared to go to our section. We got through a metal detector and are showed to where we will be staying for the afternoon. No shade. But. We are in the front row! We had been bitching that due to our role that we would be stuck in the back and not see anything! Wow. No neato credentials and we never got the shirts, but Front Row! it was worth the six hours in the sun.

We heard two bands, one really good and one really loud. We all wanted to die, but for the promise of Tee-Shirts, we kept going. They kept telling us about the shirts and how we were guaranteed shirts. We were guaranteed to see the shirts as they were flung past us from the stage.

And suddenly, they were here. They wern't just a chant or names on a thousand signs, they were real and they were here! it didn't matter that I and thousands of others had been baking like turkeys in the heat all day; they were hereFinally. The candidates arrived and the speeches started. It was awesome. There they were, just like on TV but right there right in front of us! I got to shake their hands!