My Show Me Progress colleague Hotflash will have a longer post on our home base with more details (her video camera is better than mine,) but I wanted to share some observations from last night's Organizing for America rally for health care reform at the IBEW Hall in south St. Louis.
Somewhere between 1500 to 2000 people showed up to express their support for health care reform. Not a bad crowd when you consider that no program was announced ahead of time. I had no idea who would speak, if anyone. The lineup was pretty strong, actually, with St. Louis Labor Council Pres. Bob Soutier, St. Louis Board of Alderman Pres. Lewis Reed, St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley, and Congressman Russ Carnahan as the headliners. All of the speakers were extremely passionate and articulate speakers with the exception of Russ, who presented his case rather coolly. And I mean no disrespect to Carnahan - he's improved his public speaking considerably since his first congressional campaign and did a fine job Sunday evening.
They shared the stage with a woman who is fighting to pay for her son's epilepsy and leukemia treatments, even with insurance, an OFA volunteer who has been organizing for the past several months in the St. Louis area, and OFA Deputy Director Jeremy Bird, who reminded us that we've come farther in the fight for universal health care in the last six weeks than the previous sixty years.
The rally wasn't the endpoint of what Organizing for America is doing for health care reform in the area. Every speaker emphasized the importance of talking to friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family. And OFA is formally organizing rallygoers and OFA contacts to help out with events like phone banks.
Here's Jeremy Bird:
Ted Kennedy was on the mind of many rallygoers. I talked to several people in the audience who were upset about Ted Kennedy's death, especially that he wasn't around to see his life's work complete. And one attendee had a special reminder for our senators and representatives in Congress:
Tea Party people are insufferable. I don't even have a problem calling them brownshirts anymore, since their only aim is not to engage, but to disrupt. The Tea Party organizers tried to outnumber us (Bill Hennessy stated that they wanted to get 500 to show up if OFA got 300) but they only mustered up perhaps 75 people. They maintained a presence on the turnoff from Hampton Avenue to get into the venue, and also formed a line outside the parking lot where the rally was held. Neither of which bothered me; they have every right to wave signs and express their point of view to passersby. But they continually shouted through bullhorns to disrupt the speakers during the rally, even through the prayer that preceded the rally. Their brownshirt tactics reached a peak when they actually drove a truck right up to the rally honking a loud horn, at which point the police arrived and the brownshirts quickly dispersed.
Prior to the rally, people who arrived early expressed their support for reform, drowning out even the Tea Party bullhorn:
During the rally, a shouting match wasn't really an option. Here the Tea Party protesters shouted with their bullhorn even through the prayer and the woman's story about trying to pay for her child's leukemia treatment: