Daily Kos

Thanks for walking the walk, and for sharing.

as many signs actually about healthcare as they did yesterday.

that was one thing that struck me about what i saw of their rally: they had birther nonsense, anti-tax nonsense, faux-concern for the constitution, anti-socialist stuff, etc., but i saw very little actually about healthcare.

kind of reminded of kos' critique of antiwar rallies back in '03 and '04: there was no message control. you ended up with signs about israel-palestine, vegetarianism, "free mumia" and a grab-bag of the left's pet causes.  so it's kinda funny that we seem to have switched places. (except that they had much fewer people than the antiwar rallies.)

sucks that we didn't have more people there.  i wanted to make the trip, but had commitments to party rallies and events this weekend. i guess the fact that none of us know what we're supposed to be fighting for on our side anymore has taken its toll. thanks again for nothing, spineless DC dems!

I gotta learn how to do that!

about Jesus and pre-existing conditions is priceless. Thanks for posting these.

It was the local OFA March, I'd say that altogether, between 100 and 150 beautiful people were present.

I hope I can find some pics later on today and post them in a Diary (Yeah, I know, have to get familiar with Photo Bucket), most Honorable Mark Leno showed up and addressed us, his first words were, "Hello True Believers"

There were a couple of sight-seeing groups, one from Spain and another from Italy, they took pictures of us with our signs.

I got interviewed for Spanish TV and by an SFSU student-reporter. (We will see if Spa TV airs it)

Till later on my Diary.

I wasn't there but I would SWEAR there was at least between 30,000,000 & 43,000,000 people standing alongside you, at least in spirit.

What's it gonna take to do that?

And look at their signs. They fight AGAINST Obama. We fight FOR the American people. PERIOD.

And, deliver some poignant messages, as well.

Thank you!

I was going to post about it but still haven't figured out how to post the photos.  Good on you, coquiero.  

The absence of teabaggers was something I noted as well.  Everyone was very upbeat even though we were such a small crowd.  People lined up to speak and got a listen--no jeeers or sneers.  I was also impressed by the fact that there were quite a few doctors and nurses there.  One young doctor came all the way from Texas and spoke about the fact that 1 in 4 people in Texas have no health insurance.  

CNN and FAUX news were not there.  A local ABC station was. One of my favorite signs was taped to a young man's back it said "WE not ME".  

prep ofr and it is tommorow.. god I hate liquid diets.. I am ssooooooo hungry. Next time

Excuse me while I go wallow in despair again.

Please, don't let this me a distraction.  I will attend the next one.  We can meet once a week.  I'm willing.  

A march of a hundred or so in downtown Portland:
March for a Strong Public Option.

instead of attending a health care rally: I did the Race for the Cure, along with 25,002 (according to our Emperor Mayor) other folks.

Yup, half an economy-size teaparty's worth of people ran, walked, limped and rolled 5 kilometers to raise money for breast cancer research and treatment. We got cheered on by the aforementioned Emperor Mayor, the Governor, Judge Judy, and Stephen Colbert, among others. And that was just here in NYC. I raised $1300 this year. I signed a health-care-reform petition and got to wear a sticker that says "I vote for the cure". There was one person who raised about $115,000 by herself. Awesome.

They have these events all over the country, all times of year ( when depends largely on your local weather). Check it out - it's great.

This is the tenth time I've done this event, so I wasn't about to throw it over. Also I figured that made up for not attending a rally today. Also I went to one two weeks ago. And I forgot to get pie.

to build the next march. let's do it correctly this time.

healthcare protest.  The people of America needs to know that the Repubs created one of the largest federal deficits in history!  

They did not pay for wars or tax cuts for wealthy!  Why don't we hear about this more??????

...a more friendly and informed crowd than the weirdos yesterday.  I read a Robert Reich article on Huffpo a month or more ago about this rally.  DC is a long way for me but I would have gone if the info subsequent to Reich's showed even a bit of organization- I am nonetheless grateful to the good souls who represented me with class today.   Thanks so much for the diary.  

but we lost our house so am moving this weekend, busy cleaning our house, signing the papers tomorrow. We'll probably never "own" again since now our credit rating is in the crapper. Just taking a break to cool down. I was hoping to hear that there were big rallies going on, but like Bill Maher said " Obama past health care for the 70 % that aren't nuts." - or something like that.

Ok back to it.

Imploring the Morans to wake up or calling for the Goverment to get out of Medecine? How can we win like that?
 

I dont know the first thing in organizing a rally but I would definitely be there if there was one.

i would love to believe that, but are there actual estimates?  

was at the gold stand at the street food fest as we marched along?  We had about 250.

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For everyone that made an effort I thank them.  I am no longer angry about the failure in NYC.  I will be talking to the OFA people about that.  I know a couple of their organizers.  They need to get better at this process, learn how to drive it themselves and not rely on grassroots to make it all happen. Of course, in the final analysis, no matter how good something is organized, it will fail if people don't show up (that should be our roles).

(but I didn't make it nor do I need surgery :)

that's the point that needs to be made a lot more.  Did everybody read Fromma Harrop's column about "Death Panels"?

that our side is losing the PR war for a lot of reasons, but one of them is we're not getting off our fannies and the wingnuts are.  

Something is very wrong when the good guys get hundreds in D.C. for healthcare reform,  and the morans get tens of thousands against it.

There has to be some sort of coalition effort between progressive groups, unions, and the party leadership to get something massive to happen.   This is becoming disheartening.

     on the signs.

...our side knows how to spell!!!

and had a good time. I was happy to have my sign photographed several times (mine said "If DC had a vote in Congress, we'd vote for the public option!!!") What the crowd lacked in size it made up for in spirit. And I've been spending so much time pontificating about health care to a few friends and reading about it on blogs that it was really nice to be in a large group of people so passionate about this. I look forward to the big October rally.

I did not attend one today. We had one last Monday. I'm kind of surprised by all the posts about no one organizing an event. I read plenty of posts/emails about the events scheduled for today, but chose to go to the one we had on Labor Day. I've also read about other events taking place across the country. I totally understand why people just can't make it to these things, but I find it irksome when people complain about others not doing anything. I guess if it's not on the tv screen, it doesn't matter.

BUT never found it.  At least, I tried.

I think this proves you can't expect much if all you do is post events on OFA.  This needs lots more work - probably more than most of us have time to do.   OFA needs to take a leadership role here.  They have full time staff, how about working on a march in late October / early November?  Team up with HCAN, AFLCIO, SEIU, etc...  

My daughter was denied testing Fri for possible Chrons disease. I can not express my hate for ALL these insurance companies.

Health Reform Rally  09

all of you!

The photos are great!  :)

"Anti-public option protesters outnumber pro-reform protesters 50 to 1."

Disaster.

townhall in Santa Clara as an auxilliary Raging Granny.  Someone said that some grannies should go on to Los Gatos where, it was rumored, great numbers of the Confederacy of Dunces, aka teabaggers, aka Army of Zombies were going to be. So I went with one other granny. At first, it was ok, but once inside the townhall, I realized there were a great many teabaggers. I left early because I hadn't had a chance to eat anything and when I emerged from the JCC, I saw mobs of Dunces on one side and a smaller group of Obama supporters on the other. They were separated by a couple of policepeople.  Unfortunately, I was almost to my car when I realized it would be an excellent opportunity to take photos. I returned. One of the Dunces asked me what it was like inside the hall. Politely, I began to tell him. One of the other baggers didn't like my choice of words and I was assailed and basically shamed for using the word "asshole" to describe the behavior of one of their confederates inside the hall. "Oh," they said, "It's because he's so angry, so passionate about what's going on." At that point I should have said, "And that gives him the right to behave like an asshole?"  Alas, I did not.

 My mother always told me that once you've left a social function, you shouldn't turn back. This advice was accompanied by a story about a girl who left a party with her friends, turned back to say goodbye to someone and was found dead in the driveway, a smoking cigarette in her hand, an hour later. My mother, God rest her soul, was right.

Have participated in a few rallies over the years and always found them a positive experience, bonding participants in a way that the Internet probably cannot.

Congratulations on the rally and making the Recommended List.

I wish I could have been there!

From John:

Thanks to everyone who helped to make this happen!

I really appreciated the stories shared by many, some heart-wrenching, some bold and determined and all for health care reform!

I also liked the spontaneous ground swell for rallying in D.C, starting with Julie's dream and spreading out across the county.  We had folks from California, Texas, Wisconsin, New York, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and more.  We did it without any big organizational support (no OFA, no DNC, no moveon.org, no HCAN).  It was truly grassroots.

Hello!

Thank you to all those who came out today..... Since we were expecting a small turnout compared to the Glen Beck event, we decided to call today’s venue: "Vigil to Announce the October Rally" which is a funky name but it gets the point across, and people took to it really well; including the media (Channel 7News, Voice of America, etc.)  This was a true grassroots initiative started by a woman in the cornfields of Iowa –yeehaw Julie!

I was pleased by the turnout... ~900 people signed in, and many others did not, so I’d say we had somewhere around  1200-1500. When we arrived at 10:30am we set up two sign-in booths and signage, and when a good number of people were there, we started marching around the perimeter until the stage was set. A friend of mine came through with a good sound system and Miles and I kicked off the open mic. with a chant. These people were energized and it didn’t seem to make a difference to them that Glen Beck’s event was much bigger. We were all moved by the stories and the passion that our roster of 20+ speakers shared with us. A good number of people stayed through the end (~3pm) and then we went to the Hawk ‘n’ Dove to celebrate over beers. I just got back and I’m very tired, but it was an eventful and exciting day, and I’m sure glad we went through with it.  

I love the signs. We'll be having a town hall in TN soon & I may steal some ideas. What a great march! Your intro cracked me up.

I'm so glad it was a good experience for you and your children. Thanks for being there for those of us who live too far away

photos and diary. We have GOT to show Congress that people care enough about reform and the public option to go all the way to DC to show it.

Way to go!

We had about 300 people at the Civic Plaza.  It was covered by all three local news stations and made the evening news and local on-line reports.

The news reporters made mentioned it was organized by grassroots -- a very important point to make.

I felt the coverage was fair, but most importantly, that it demonstrates to the casual observer that there is another side fighting to make real healtcare reform happen.

Kudos to all of us out there doing whatever we can!

I'll try to post pix a bit later.

My favorite sign at the event:

Grandmas FOR Public Option

they did the Teabagger Rally yesterday?

rally in October?  I heard some talk about one, but nothing specific, and I couldn't turn up anything on Google.

learned spelling. I knew spelling bees were a commie plot! Rush told me so.

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