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Sunday, September 14, 2008

Everybody in Alaska DOESN'T love Sarah Palin
Posted by Jill | 9:41 PM
Next time Chris Matthews says that "Everyone likes" Sarah Palin, e-mail him and send him this link to an account of today's "Alaska Women Reject Palin" rally:
The rally was organized by a small group of women, talking over coffee. It made me wonder what other things have started with small groups of women talking over coffee. It’s probably an impressive list. These women hatched the plan, printed up flyers, posted them around town, and sent notices to local media outlets. One of those media outlets was KBYR radio, home of Eddie Burke, a long-time uber-conservative Anchorage talk show host. Turns out that Eddie Burke not only announced the rally, but called the people who planned to attend the rally “a bunch of socialist baby-killing maggots”, and read the home phone numbers of the organizers aloud over the air, urging listeners to call and tell them what they thought. The women, of course, received many nasty, harassing and threatening messages.

So, as I jettisoned myself from the jaws of the ‘Drill Baby Drill’ crowd and toward the mystery rally at the library, I felt a bit apprehensive. I’d been disappointed before by the turnout at other rallies. Basically, in Anchorage, if you can get 25 people to show up at an event, it’s a success. So, I thought to myself, if we can actually get 100 people there that aren’t sent by Eddie Burke, we’ll be doing good. A real statement will have been made. I confess, I still had a mental image of 15 demonstrators surrounded by hundreds of menacing “socialist baby-killing maggot” haters.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t tailgating when I saw the crowd in front of the library or I would have ended up in somebody’s trunk. When I got there, about 20 minutes early, the line of sign wavers stretched the full length of the library grounds, along the edge of the road, 6 or 7 people deep! I could hardly find a place to park. I nabbed one of the last spots in the library lot, and as I got out of the car and started walking, people seemed to join in from every direction, carrying signs.

Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn’t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn’t happen here.


Well, it did, despite the attempts of the hatemongers to intimidate the women out of showing up:




One of these days, someone whipped into a frenzy by right-wing hate radio is going to kill someone. Arguably, someone already has, at the Unitarian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. But there will be one of these where the shooter will leave a note saying he was doing the will of [fill in name wingnut talk radio moron]. And the host will of course deny responsibility.

But if you needed further proof that this election is a battle for the very soul of this country, here it is. It's the forces of medievalism vs. those with the vision to try to shape our role in our inevitable future. That decision ought to be a no-brainer.

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Blogger Porlock Junior said...
All those people? Wow, that must have been a fine free rock concert that the people really went there for.

I mean, that was the line in Portland and Berlin [I never thought the phrase "Portland and Berlin" would have occasion to appear in my prose] so why not Anchorage?

Seriously, impressive.
9/15/08, 12:23 AM  
Blogger Bob said...
The photos are great. Judging from the size of the crowd & the variety of homemade signs, there was a good deal of spontaneity that far exceeded organizer expectations, as if those women had quietly simmering & just waiting for the opportunity to show their feelings. Palin has to meet that kind of resistance wherever she goes. Sarah Palin is a phony, a shill for big oil hiding behind all the small town values & reformer bullshit. Even scarier, she may be a naive phony.
9/15/08, 12:29 AM  
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