PHOTOS/REPORT - Obama's Rally In Fayetteville NC Today ("Walk Into That Booth, Say 'Not This Time'")

Hissyspit

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Sun Oct-19-08 05:09 PM
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PHOTOS/REPORT - Obama's Rally In Fayetteville NC Today ("Walk Into That Booth, Say 'Not This Time'")

Edited on Sun Oct-19-08 05:47 PM by Hissyspit

I'm back from attending the rally for and speech by Sen. Obama that occurred in the packed 8,500-person Crown Colosseum in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of Fort Bragg, station for the 82nd Airborne and the 18th Airborne among others -a place George W. Bush visited often because of the (assumed) friendly, captive audience. I'm sure you can find some of Sen. Obama's speechifying on YouTube by now. Apologies for some of the lack of resolution in the photographs. These were taken with my cell phone. I left my really nice phone at home because I wanted to travel light.

The view of the arena as we lined up to go through security:

Standing in line to enter the arena, the crowd was treated to an exciting fly-over by Obama's campaign plane. I didn't get a picture of it because it happened just I had turned my phone off to save power (darn that speed of sound, no notice at all). I did get a picture, however, of this 2-year-old who kept saying to his mother "We going to see O-bama?"

The themes for the day - 'Get Out The Vote/There Is Sunday Early Voting Today,' and 'Veterans For Obama:'

Kids played on the floor of the arena, awaiting Barack:

The Wave made its way through the crowd at one point, of course:

As per tradition for these rallies, once most of us had made it into the hall, the song "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" by McFadden and Whitehead got the crowd into an up-beat mood, as volunteers on the floor in front of the stage performed a variation of the Electric Slide and audience members joined in with some funk dancing of their own. After the Pledge of Allegience and the National Anthem, Tenicia Williams, an Iraq War vet and local veteran's representative, spoke.

"Like many of you, for the past eight years I have been angry... but if you are going to be angry, be angry with an objective. Vote Sen. Obama today - so we can bring help to our homeless vets, so another family won't have to wonder when a deployment will end, so we can give our troops the health care they need..."

She was followed by Rhonda Fedora, an Army wife: "I struggle with providing basic needs to my family, while trying to distract my daughters from their father's latest deployment." "I am a member of Gold Star Mothers for Obama.... which means I am pro-military and pro-Obama." She says she used the tax calculator located at www.barackobama.com and found that her tax savings would be over $2,000 with Obama's proposed tax cuts. She did some research on McCain's tax cuts and found her savings would be zero.

Obama hugged her after she introduced him to the full house:

Barack began by sharing the morning's news with the crowd: "I am deeply humbled to have the support of General Powell," telling the crowd that he had only heard of the endorsement this morning. Powell "reminded us that at this defining moment we don't have the luxury of relying on the same political games... that have been used in so many elections to divide us from one another and make us afraid of one another.... they'll probably get uglier in these last sixteen days. You'll get more of these 'robo-calls...' We've got to stay focused... No matter what you do, you have the chance to walk into that booth, and pull that curtain, and say 'not this time, not this year.'" From this he turned to economic issues. "At this rate, the question is not 'are you better off than you were four years ago, but are you better off than you were four weeks ago?'"

A young rally attendee looked on and waved an American flag:

Audience members listened on as Obama mocked being accused of 'socialism.' "Because I want to give a tax cut the middle class... I call it giving people opportunity... what they want to do, it's not relief, and it's not right.":

Obama: "There are no real or fake parts of this country. We're not separated by the 'pro-America' and 'anti-America' parts of this country... the men and women from Fayetteville, and all across America, who serve in our battlefields. They may be Democrats or Republicans or Independents, but they fought together ,and bled together and some have died together. They have not served a red America or a blue America. They have served a United States of America."

At one point Sen. Obama announced that there were several thousand people who had to stay outside the arena, because of fire codes, but were hearing us inside through a loud-speaker system:

Another good day for change in America: