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Omaha and I took the kids to the Seattle satellite rally at Westlake Center for Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. After a quick breakfast, we took the light rail into town. There were a number of other rally-goers on the train, and we all met and shook hands and laughed and had a good time.
When we got to the rally, the place was completely packed to the brim. There were a lot of signs, most of them completely reasonable, although there was this one woman carrying a sign that was pure, unadulterated madness. The usual crowd of crazies did populate the periphery: 9/11 truthers, Larouchites, Wobblies were all in evidence, passing out their odd little pamphlets to an unimpressed crowd.
The rail fell and nobody cared. The bandwidth to DC sucked and we had to live with interruptions throughout. I talked to a woman from security who said this was the most mellow crowd she'd ever seen, the cops had nothing to do. I mentioned I was surprised nobody was smoking weed, and she agreed that that was surprising to her too.
When Father Guido Sarducci was onstage, asking God for a sign about which religion was truth, he went down the list and when he got to "Islam! Is Islam the one true religion, God?" this crowd of four or five very cute girls behind us suddenly squee'd with delight. It was very cute indeed, and as this is seattle, nobody gave a damn.
We left after two hours, having done our civic duty of adding our voices and numbers to the population that showed up. When they talk about the crowd count at the Mall, which was about double that of Glenn Beck's (who is also an entertainer, a "rodeo clown," in his own words), I wonder if they'll add in the numbers of all the people who attended the satellite rallies. After all, it would be unreasonable to fly all the way across the country after a school week and the day before Halloween for some mere entertainment.
More photos, including a massive crowd panorama.
When we got to the rally, the place was completely packed to the brim. There were a lot of signs, most of them completely reasonable, although there was this one woman carrying a sign that was pure, unadulterated madness. The usual crowd of crazies did populate the periphery: 9/11 truthers, Larouchites, Wobblies were all in evidence, passing out their odd little pamphlets to an unimpressed crowd.
The rail fell and nobody cared. The bandwidth to DC sucked and we had to live with interruptions throughout. I talked to a woman from security who said this was the most mellow crowd she'd ever seen, the cops had nothing to do. I mentioned I was surprised nobody was smoking weed, and she agreed that that was surprising to her too.
When Father Guido Sarducci was onstage, asking God for a sign about which religion was truth, he went down the list and when he got to "Islam! Is Islam the one true religion, God?" this crowd of four or five very cute girls behind us suddenly squee'd with delight. It was very cute indeed, and as this is seattle, nobody gave a damn.
More photos, including a massive crowd panorama.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-01 02:21 pm (UTC)Was a very good time.
Also Metro is reporting that ridership saturday broke a 19 year record with 825,000 riders. Typical ridership on a saturday is <300,000.