Earlier today, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held a massive rally at the National Mall in Washington D.C. titled “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear”, in which over a million people came from all over to attend. It was broadcasted live on Comedy Central from 11am to 2pm Central Time.
In Chicago and other cities, satellite rallies were launched for those who were unable or unwilling to make it to D.C. The Chicago Rally, which was titled “Rally to Restore Sanity Chicago”, was organized by Angie McMahon, who had worked tirelessly for over a month to organize and sponsor this event.
The Chicago Rally took place in Grant Park. I arrived early to take pictures and get some quotes and brief interviews with several attendees for an article for the DePaulia. It was shortly a few minutes before 10am and the area was almost empty. There were only about 50 to 60 people, including volunteers. “What if people don’t show up?” I thought.
People did show up, a couple of thousand at least. One of the best treats about rallies is the posters and their owners. I admire that they take the time and effort to create a poster and carry it around all day. Two fiftyish women traveled all the way from the small town of Dixon, IL to attend the Rally. “It was a weekend trip,” said Sandy Schuler. “We were in town since yesterday shopping but the main reason we came was for the rally.” When I mentioned that Stewart stated that the Main Rally was not political, Rosemary Johnson disagreed. “I think he was serious,” said Schuler. “I think that it’s time that civil discourse was actually civil.” She didn’t like the low tactics that most politicians were using to get attention. Both women mentioned that they had volunteered for a campaign during this election season.
Elaine Heggie and Laura Ingler, two twenty-somethings from the south suburbs, are fed up with the way politicians in general. “Politics are fucked up!” Heggie exclaimed. “It feels like that South Park episode where people had to decide between a turd sandwich and a giant douche,” said Heggie. Ingler, who recently moved here from Michigan, feels that “(politicians) abandon everything they once stood for.” Both young women are concerned that many people around their age are apathetic when it comes to politics. Heggie mentioned she was once like this. Things are different now. “I pay taxes,” she said, “so I have to actually care. They’re fighting each other (Democrats and Republicans) instead of helping out the people who elected them.”
Rally Chicago volunteers David and Kaela were also vocal on their decision to help out with the rally. “This is a reminder that there’s a moderate audience out there,” said David, “and that audience is being left out.” Kaela believes that people shouldn’t have to settle for extremities. “Politicians pander to the chaos,” she stated. The negative campaign ads don’t help politicians, especially those from Christine O’Donnell, Rand Paul, Bill Brady, and many others. “They are degrading,” she added. “It feels like they are nothing more than aggressive salesman, pushing a product for us to buy.”
While the intentions of McMahon, the guest speakers, and all those involved in making the rally possible were in the right place and I give them credit and respect for taking action instead of sitting on the sidelines, I’m not sure if this rally held up its name. Like the Main Rally, I’m not sure what the exact purpose of the Rally was. It wasn’t officially a political rally but a lot of people brought with them their political baggage. I mean a guy, Rich Whitney, who is running for Governor on the Illinois Green Party showed up to speak for Chrissakes. How is that NOT political?
Of course, there were a couple of speakers present who were probably better off not being there, and they were not political, or even in accordance with the purpose of the Chicago Rally. There was a Mitch Hedberg wannabe comedian who talked about sandwiches and used his jokes as a poor analogy on abortion. “Some people say that a sandwich is conceived the moment the cheese is inserted,” he said. “Others say it’s when the meat is placed between the slices of bread.” I was very close to joining the chants of the TV Rally crowd, just so I didn’t have to hear this lousy stand-up.
For an event that has the words “Restore Sanity”, it got a bit insane during parts of the early afternoon. McMahon had brought in a Jumbo-Tron so the audience could see the live telecast of the Main Rally in D.C. The Chicago audience was able to see the Jumbo-Tron throughout the 3-hour event but they were only able to watch (with audio) for only a small portion, which was roughly 20 to 30 minutes. “It was insane to have a Jumbo-Tron and live feed and not use it,” wrote Erick Robertson on Facebook. The audience had split up into the TV Rally crowd and the Live Rally crowd. The TV Rally crowd wanted to watch Stewart and Colbert’s rally and the Live Rally crowd wanted to listen to the live speakers and performances that were on-stage. Things got so tense that a security guard grabbed a mic from someone and told the TV Crowd that “they should have stayed their asses at home” if they wanted to watch TV. There were both cheers and jeers, and much of the TV Rally people left.
While I understand that this security guard was trying to get the audience to settle down, she didn’t have to be such rude about it. The worst part is the organizers seemed to have condoned this woman’s harshness; not one person, even McMahon, stepped forward and apologized or even told her that how her behavior was out of line. I was at the Chicago Rally to see the speakers, interact with some people who were part of the “85% of the moderates who were being overlooked by the mainstream media”, and of course, get a good story for my school paper. I was in the Live Rally crowd but that security guard was out of line. If I wasn’t at the Rally for the third reason I stated, I would have left, not because I wanted to watch the Main Rally, but this woman took me out of the Rally. “She ruined the event, not the not the fact that the DC rally was not being shown continuously,” commented LeeAnn Morgan on the Facebook page for McMahon’s Rally.
“I think the Chicago rally was a fine idea,” wrote Vickie Hellyer, “but (they) should not have used the Stewart "Rally to Restore Sanity" name to represent the event. It should have taken place prior to or immediately after the airing of the Stewart/Colbert event.” But how many people would have gone to the rally if the Jumbo-Tron wasn’t at the rally broadcasting the Main Rally? Despite the fact that McMahon stressed that the D.C. Rally was not going to be the entire event, many people seemed to have been disappointed, especially when they cut off Ozzy Osbourne’s performance, which triggered the loud chants of “Turn on the audio!” (The origin of the chants began with a woman a few rows behind me who wanted to listen to Sam Waterson recite a poem instead of two members from the Progressive Alliance.)
I was sitting next to a group of college-age kids who were shouting back at the audience to pipe down. “You guys suck!” shouted one obnoxious guy in a backwards baseball cap. He had fallen to the same low as the security guard. His immature shouts were filled with irony. At the beginning of the Chicago Rally, McMahon spoke to the crowd. “No matter what personal, political, or social backgrounds we all have,” she stated in her opening speech, “We will disagree without hate speech.” This was about an hour before Obnoxious Guy and his posse began to shout at the TV Rally crowd. I’m surprised that a fight didn’t break out (that I’m aware of).
The Chicago Rally finally gave way to the Main Rally for the last few moments of their telecast. Jon Stewart gave a comic yet poignant speech about America. He used footage of traffic entering the Holland Tunnel in New York.
“This is who we are (the cars), that’s a schoolteacher who thinks his taxes are too high…a woman with two small kids who really can’t think of anything else right now…another car is a Latino carpenter…Mormon Jay-Z fan…Every one of these cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief and principles they hold dear. Often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers. And yet these millions of cars must somehow find their way to squeeze one by one into a mile-long, 30 foot wide tunnel carved underneath a might river…and they do it, concession by concession, ‘You go then I’ll go, you go then I’ll go.’”
Now that I have seen the Main Rally on TV this evening and seen the highlights online, I wish that I had gone to THAT rally. He described America in such terms that only he could make that would bring a nation, even for an afternoon, together in a union that has only been demonstrated through times of tragedy and legitimate fear.
What I got out of this afternoon was that we are a vast and diverse nation filled with millions upon millions of ideals, beliefs, backgrounds, and histories that have been used by fear-mongers, politicians, the mass media, and others with hidden and/or personal agendas to pit us against one another. We cannot let our differences divide us but rather use those differences to work together and create a better nation, a better world. Two years ago we elected Barack Obama on the premise that we wanted change. “Yes we can” was the slogan he used during the campaign, and that is exactly what we were hoping for. But we can’t change a nation solely on hope and catchy slogans. We have to change a nation on actions, efficient strategies, by working together instead of working in competition and fighting each other instead of fighting for the people. We need sanity in these United States and we need it fast. #
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