We attended our first policital rally together this past Sunday! Barack Obama was appearing in Fayetteville, NC and we decided to head down and see him.
Let us first say that whenever you have 10,000+ people gather for an event, you should have a meeting before the event to talk about procedures and brainstorm ideas to make the event run as smoothly as possible. Apparently this idea was lost on the fine people in Fayetteville.
We arrived at 11:00 (when the gates were supposed to open). There were no signs as to where to get into the line... and looking at the mass of people, you couldn't see a beginning of the line or the end of the line. There were people all over who were volunteers for the event, but none of them said anything about where to go to get in line. So we just kinda followed everyone else and as they moved, we moved. We were given tickets so we were pretty sure we'd get in, we just didn't know when or where.
We stood outside in a hodgepodge of people for about 45 minutes. The crowd was mild and no one was getting upset or causing any problems. UNTIL we got to the barriers that they had put down. Apparently there WAS a line and we weren't even in it. We were on the outside of it and everyone that was on the other side of this barrier was allowed in and they told us to go get in line like everyone else. That was a BAD idea... people started getting really upset and the next thing we knew... the line pushed ahead and moved the barrier out of the way and everyone stormed forward. We had no other choice but to "ride the wave of people" and keep moving.
Had we not been in that spot, it's possible that we wouldn't have been able to get inside. They had more than 2,000 people outside that couldn't get inside. We got past the barrier and it was open and no lines for about a minute. Then we had to get in line again for the doors and metal dectector. Once again, there was no order, rhyme or reason to the lines. Instead of having everyone merge into one line for the ONE metal dectector per group of two doors, we had stayed in two separate lines and then had to fight it out at the door. We stayed in that line for about 20 minutes or so.
Once inside, we found some seats (two people that were in line with us were next to us) and then we went to use the bathroom. Steve asked them if they would save our seats and they did. THANKFULLY!
We headed to the bathrooms. You'd think that in a stadium, there'd be bathrooms all over, but not this place. There were ONE set of bathrooms. Of course there was a line for the women's but that was nothing compared to the line for food. We waited in line for food for more than 45 minutes. It was crazy.
We got back to our seats and had time to eat before Barack Obama came out. It was really awesome to hear the roar of the crowd when he came out. He sounded exactly like he does on television and because we have been watching the debates and some of his speeches, we weren't as wowed as others. It was a great speech though and when he announced that General Colin Powell gave him his endorsement... the place went crazy.
Cathy's Barack Paper Scissors shirt was very popular. She had a lot of people ask where she got it and a lot laughed when they saw it. It was neat to see all the Obama shirts that people were wearing. The crowd was predominately black, but there were some white people and a very small number of hispanics. We didn't see any Native Americans, Asians, or other minorities present. Steve said it's because of the area.
After the speech was over, we got up to leave and headed to the right... back the way we entered. The entrance area was blocked and the people at that door said, "You can't get out this way... you have to go back to other way." At this point, there was a huge crowd forming behind us trying to get out. For us to turn around and go the other way... NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. So once again, someone pushed forward and everyone else followed and rushed past the workers. The odd thing, once we were past that section, there were volunteers from Obama's campaign asking people to go vote early and passing out flyers. If we weren't supposed to go out that way, why were there volunteers waiting to give flyers?
We got to the car in record time and beat the crowd. It only took 5 minutes in a line to get to the road that took us back home. So let's see... we were there from 11:00-3:00. In that time, we spent two hours of it waiting in a line. Crazy!!!
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