pictures of you : obama rally shut-outs
these kids express their desire for change via t-shirts. more photos of people unable to get into the rally online. [#]
As Samanatha mentioned, I was among the thousands shut out of the Obama rally this morning. When I arrived a little after eleven, audio of an Obama speech was playing over the loudspeaker and a firm but polite British-inflected announcement was pleading with people to step away from the doors to avoid a fire hazard. Eventually, the pleasantries ended and the audio was cut off until people backed up the steps. Within twenty minutes, the police had coaxed onlookers behind security fences and the sound came back on so that we could hear Obama’s trademark Kool & the Gang along with other campaign music.
At the time, I didn’t realize that the stuff that I heard when I walked up was an old Obama speech (or campaign video); so I gave up a little after 12:30 with no hope of finagling my way through a media entrance after seeing that even people with red V.I.P. tickets (including Ms. Plus Size Washington herself!) were still stuck outside. Commenters on the Stranger’s weblog suggest that the real activity — Nickels’s introduction, Gregoire’s endorsement, and the Obama himself — didn’t happen until around 1 pm. Maybe KING 5, which was reportedly livestreaming it, will post an archive later.
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By the way, I think you should probably thank all the crappy line-cutters that were hopping the tape all around us. Myself and the two people next to me tried to fend them off, but just in our immediate vicinity, two groups of five (a family and a group of highschoolers that took a bus down from Everett), popped in. And that’s not counting the couples that swooped in farther down, closer to Key Arena proper. There was really crappy policing of the line to get in… so anyway, fwiw, I’m really sorry those line-jumpers screwed you guys over.