Senator John McCain decided to grace his home state with his final announcement that he is running for president in 2008. I know, it's a big shock! I heard throught the grapevine, though, that we provided McCain with the largest protest group of all of his announcements. I think that is the least Arizona could do for him!
As you can see, it was a beautiful day to rally for peace. We had a plan to make noise for a while to make our point, and then we were going to have a silent protest while McCain spoke. Unfortunately, the event was hermetically sealed to ward off all free speech, so a silent protest would not have been effective.
This is about as close as most of us got. My good friends C and R from the End the War Coalition and Military Families Speak Out, respectively, managed to get inside and had quite an adventure, which I hope to write about shortly.
The rest of us kept up the noise, which, C and R tell me, the McCain faithful could hear inside the event. Apparently, every time we would start chanting, they would start chanting inside, thereby interrupting their candidate during his speech.
All in all, I think it was an effective rally, with about 150 peace activists outside the event. We received some media coverage and made the point that since McCain doesn't even adequately represent his constituents, he can't possibly represent the country.
