NYC or Bust!

Yesterday in Washington Square Park was a rally for Barack Obama.  I got a ticket the day before from Maz, who received it from a woman handing them out near the Astor Street subway station.  When I arrived at the park at 3:30 (gates opened at 5:00 so I figured I would arrive plenty early), I was put into a line with people who had white tickets or no tickets (I had a white ticket).  On another side of the park was a line for people with blue tickets or internet tickets.  There were also people with green tickets but I have no idea where their line was.

I stood in line outside the park on the sidewalk for about 1 1/2 hours.  At 5 they started letting people in and this is when it became chaotic and completely unorganized.   Volunteers were supposed to be directing people, but many of them didn’t seem to know where people with the different ticket colors were supposed to go once they actually entered the park.  Eventually I ended up in a massive mob-like line where everyone else (ticket or any color or no ticket at all) ended up.  This seemed to be the place where all the lines from the outside of the park were merged so people could go through security.  So there I was with 20,000 people all trying to get through one of 4 metal detectors…

This mob-line moved about 2 or 3 steps forward every 20 minutes or so.  Some people were getting out of the mob and going over the fenced off grass areas to try to get in faster.  At about 6:30 some people started to chant “Let us in, let us in”.  Around 6:45 the entire crowd started to move forward quickly.  Apparently someone made the decision to just let people in without the metal detectors.

So the speech itself….

At about 7 pm Barack began his speec, which lasted about 40 minutes…  While I have yet to decide which candidate I will support in the primary election I do have to say that Barack Obama is a magnificent speaker.  He really knows how to get the crowd rallied.

While I could write a word for word review of the speech I feel that it is best to see or hear it.  (This is an edited version of the speech but it really is the best I have found so far.)

The Senator really got the crowd rallied with his speech about the need for a change, but there seemed to be something missing.  Sure things need to change in the United States.  Yeah, he went through  the laudry list of things that he will change if elected president…. health care, social security, the war in Iraq, student loans, energy, school, environmental policy … These are things that most people feel need to change, the big questions I still have after the speech is HOW do you intend to change these things?

If you read up on Barack’s position on the issues,  he has really great intentions and I feel that his track record agrees with his current take on the issues.  But, like so many of the speeches that are given during the primaries, little information was given as to how he intends to make these changes if he is elected president.

Upsides…  it was a great speech, great crowd, I finally had the chance to register to vote in NY.  Downsides… now I really have to do some hard core research before the primaries.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 7:27 pm and is filed under NYC . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.