Live from K/E rally at Heritage Center

[jmknapp]

Any other early birds in Springfield yet? This is the Heritage Building, adjacent to which the stage for the rally is currently being built:



Crew assembling stage:



The JavaHouse coffee shop located in the Heritage Building has an open wireless access point, pretty fast (~300 kbps).

Joe

[faithnotgreed]

1. hi jm - thanks for the post & let us hear all about it later

welcome to du

[NewYorkerfromMass]

2. Beautiful, Romanesque style bldg you got there!

(says the architect)

[jmknapp]

3. More photos

The assembly area, with the main stage evidently at the far left (no pun intended):



Some button vendors:



Buy from them rather (buttons $1 each) rather than the guys with the big boards selling buttons for $5 or 3/$10! Plus the kids have a commemorative Springfield button:



Although isn't today the 2nd? Oh well...

Joe

[jmknapp]

4. Stage

[Philostopher]

7. Mr Nownow said that, too.

But technically, it was a 'midnight rally,' that's what they've been calling it all along. Surprisingly, they started earlier -- Kerry was actually behind the mic before midnight.

[cmd]

5. Thank you, it's great to be virtually there

Looking for your next post.

[VolcanoJen]

6. Be sure to keep us updated, jmknapp!

Great photos!! Thank you!

[jmknapp]

8. Update

Well, I had to ditch the laptop and stand in line for a couple hours, so sorry about no more photos. I did take a lot of video inside.

The gates opened at 9pm and there were tons of people streaming in all night, unfortunately slowed down by the metal detectors and security, so not all were able to make it in even by midnight. I could see them still snaking up the street out of sight when Edwards started talking. At that point they closed the gates and the people who couldn't get in moved to a vantage point across the street.

I would guess 10,000 people but I really don't know.

We had heard that Kerry wasn't going to speak until midnight, so as to respond directly to Bush's convention speech and that the speech would be "historic." Not sure how it played in the news but to me it seemed like a very good Kerry speech hitting his usual themes, along with some zingers for Cheney. Like, "Let me say this to Mr. Cheney: three purple hearts beats five deferments." Or something like that.

There was a small contingent of Bush supporters just across the street. We probably wouldn't have heard them at all, except that their occasional feeble "four more years" would prompt a much more vocal "no more Bush" response from nearby Kerry supporters at various times while Kerry was speaking.

I thought Kerry came across very well in his usual fashion--not too strident, focussing on real issues on which Bush has no leg to stand.

[cmd]

9. Thanks, jmknapp!

This rally was very good news. I'm so pleased to know that there were so many supporters out there - and at such a late hour! Thank you again for sharing. cmd

[AngryOldDem]

10. WHEW! What A Night

Dead on my :kick: , but WELL worth it. Both Kerry and Edwards gave energizing, motivating speeches -- just what I needed to hear since I was feeling kind of low about things for the past couple of days. I just wish gemdem and I could have been there. I can't imagine what it must have been like for you all who were.

Just wanted to let you know that the speech did get a lot of national media attention. MSNBC covered it as part of Chris Matthews' Hardball, and CNN covered it as part of Larry King's post-convention coverage. C-SPAN had it too. C-SPAN showed Kerry working the crowd -- very good images of him stopping and talking to folks along the line.

The Washington Post had an advance text of what Kerry was going to say, so I knew he was going to hit B/C harder than he has been. I think it is a taste of what we're going to be hearing from now through Election Day, and I like it. Speak to the truth, the truth will win out.

Bush has a lot on his domestic agenda for a second term -- my question is, why should we give him a second term to do what he should have been doing during the first?

Interested in hearing about everyone's experiences.

[Kukesa]

11. Crowd estimated at 15,000 in this morning's newspaper.

Link here for the article in the "Dayton Daily News."

http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/content/localnews/daily/0903kerry.html

Good photos, jmk -- glad you took your camera to the rally, too.

And be sure to check out the photos in the above link.

[jmknapp]

12. Rally video

I haven't looked at my video footage from last night, but there are some impressive shots of the crowd I think, from the vantage point of the extreme rear (being a white-ticketed person). In the back there were some small bleacher-style stands that gave me a good perch--luckily my camcorder has good zoom.

There was a horrifying scene involving those bleachers. There were about seven rows on each and three separate units. Sometime around 11:00 one of the units collapsed completely to the ground amidst a horrible racket, and the people went over like dominoes. The medics came in very efficiently though and helped people out of the pile. It looked like there were no serious injuries, but an old lady was taken away on a stretcher.

In all, it was fascinating to arrive early and see how this all came together at the last instant, and even this near-tragedy was handled very well.

I wish there was a good way to distribute video online because even short clips are so huge in bytes.

[Kukesa]

13. Wow! I walked past those bleachers.

Hopefully the old lady wasn't hurt too badly.

You most likely had a better view of the event than I; being up front isn't always an asset.

[jmknapp]

14. Windows Media clip of rally

I think she may have just been shaken up.

Here's a short clip of some of the video I took last night at the rally, with Kerry laying into Bush/Cheney:

Kerry in Springfield, Ohio (9MB zipped Windows Media file)

Point of view from the peanut gallery.