Madison Rally: my pictures and story!
Thu Oct 28, 2004 at 05:55:30 PM PDT
Ahhhh, wow. Once in a lifetime.
"At least" 80,000 people turned out, following the 100k+ crowd in the much larger city of Philadelphia a couple days ago--no doubt Bruce Springsteen was a big draw, but no doubt either that Kerry was the rock star here. I really lucked out with a spot about five rows back from the stage, and I took many awesome pictures to share with you. I even touched Kerry as he climbed up on a barricade and leaned out over the crowd to shake hands, and on his face was wonder, excitement and... I have to say it... love, for all these Americans.
If you've been to a Kerry rally (this is my second, the first is
diaried here) you know that red and blue tickets mean you get to stand somewhere where you might be able to see, and white tickets or internet tickets mean you stand waaaaaay far away. I had a white ticket, which in fact I found lying on the ground outside my apartment building--I think someone from the K/E campaign went around and left them at the doors. But I got to the rally pretty early and when someone came down the line handing out spare blue tickets, I dove for her last one. Yahoo!
Having a red or blue ticket means going through security, which cost me the mini swiss army knife my boyfriend gave me for my birthday (sigh). But I got a spot about 15 feet from the stage, which seemed like an okay trade. When the crowd filled in, people were packed densely for maybe 1/4 of a mile stretch of West Washington Avenue, all the way to the Capitol Building. I felt extremely fortunate to be so close.
warm-up band.
Music was scheduled to start at 11 AM, but the band above [update: Paul Cebar and the Milwakians] began playing at 9:50 and went on for half an hour or 45 minutes. While they were playing a local news crew came through and interviewed a few people. I said something about the fact Kerry had drawn over 100k recently in Philadelphia and while I wasn't sure we'd get quite so many in Madison, we'd try. He asked me what I thought about about The Boss being there, and (again don't laugh, I am NOT musical, I went and downloaded some of his songs yesterday so I'd know what kind of things he sings) it took me a second to register "Springsteen" and I commented that it was quite wonderful and this was the first time he'd ever turned out in support of a candidate.
It's almost disturbing how many people these days have cellphones.
After the band, a number of local officials spoke, and our Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin spoke and then led everyone in what was intended to be the biggest phone bank ever, direct from the rally via cellphone. There were cards with a script, and small slips with phone numbers to call. I did see people around me calling, though by no means everyone who held up a phone in the above picture.
Lead Foo Fighter. [update: his name is Dave Grohl. Thanks korbend!] He's cute. Didn't throw any Foo.
Our senior senator Herb Kohl spoke, followed by our junior senator, the wildly beloved Russ Feingold. He mentioned Bruce and introduced the Foo Fighters, whose name I don't like but I liked them and they had neat Kerry-Edwards guitar straps. The lead Foo Fighter said that the Bush/Cheney campaign had played their music at rallies, and finding they had no good legal way to stop them doing so, they decided to play at Kerry rallies to make their allegiance very clear.
The enormous crowd, which can actually be better seen in this image from Johnkerry.com.
After this there was a longish interlude in which they played standard taped rally music (U2, etc... see, I know U2) over the loudspeakers and everyone was rather restless to see Bruce and Kerry, who I don't believe were there just yet. I'm much too sedentary and my lower back was really bothering me by this point from standing for a few hours, and I was getting a little spacey from low blood pressure. But I had a big grin on my face anyway, because I felt thrilled and fortunate to be there. The crowd was vast by this point, and someone was saying 80,000, which is also the number the press has reported. Madison has a population of about 430k according to the 2000 census. So that's almost a fifth of the population, and on a weekday.
A good big picture of Bruce.
Bruce and Kerry showed up eventually, and Governor Jim Doyle introduced the former with a a speech describing John Kerry in terms of Springsteen song titles, which amused Bruce and the crowd with its badness. There were two songs, Promised Land and the Kerry campaign's anthem No Surrender ("This is for you, John"), with some heartfelt, eloquent, low-key words in between about the state of the world and why he believes in John Kerry. We made a promise we swore we'd always remember, no retreat, baby, no surrender. Take that, B/C talking points.
Prime photo op. This picture is uncropped, so you can see how close I was (I did use my 3x zoom).
And then Bruce introduced his friend, future-president Kerry, to wild appreciation from the crowd. Kerry told the crowd they didn't know how beautiful they all looked, and talked about how stirring it was to have Bruce there playing No Surrender live, after two years of using it at rallies. He told us some naysayer had once declared Kerry would never be president till after the Red Sox won the World Series... which they obliged with yesterday. He said some strong words about the looting of the hundreds of tons of high explosives in Iraq. And Edwards is supposed to be the one good at speaking to the concerns and vulnerabilities of working Americans but Kerry did a deeply sincere and eloquent job of that today. We interrupted him a couple times with chants of "five more days!"
Good big picture of Kerry
When he was done speaking he came down and shook hands with those around the stage, and we crushed foward. Some kind people let me through. Every ten feet or so Kerry would get up on the barrier and lean out over the sea of faces, grasping hands and grinning, and his security people held him by the waist. When he got to my section he was leaning almost over me and I was looking up at him, I reached up and touched his lean bicep, and brushed his face. It seemed awkward groping at a stranger, but I saw his expression then of profound affection for the crowd, eager to touch us. That's what I most remember.
We're gonna win this thing.
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