Results from the Mountain View rally.
Hey all, my name's Ed, I've been watching the forums for a while, just haven't registered until now.
Anyway, I went to Dr. Paul's rally today in Mountain View, and if I may I'll just share with you what I did and saw.
My friend mark and I left the North bay about 5:30 a.m. and got to the park quite a bit earlier than we were supposed to. We showed up about 7, when only Kathy - the meet up leader - and her team were there assembling the stage.
We didn't have anything to do so we volunteered to help; first bringing in tables and chairs, then directing people to their seating areas and getting the connections for the bloggers setup.
About a dozen or so people arrived between 7 and 8, which was cool cause we weren't anywhere near done with the stage or merchandise areas
.
Come about 8:30 Kathy had us start gathering up pamphlets, contribution forms and envelops to be passed out later, and in the meantime we kept directing people to try and keep a reasonably well organized seating area. Come about 9:00 people started to file in from three different directions en masse, and we abandoned showing people where to sit, they all pretty much knew how to keep up the terraced seating.
The first speaker to arrive was Ed Griffin (I got to set up his chairs!) followed by Joe Bannister, Joe Wheeler and Justin Raimondo. The guests were very outgoing. Virtually all their time before they were set to speak was spent in small groups, talking to people and getting people pumped up for the rally. We started passing out contribution sheets and pamphlets to everyone who wanted them, and I was fortunate to find somebody from Southern California who had a huge stack of bumper stickers which people were clamoring for, so he let me pass em' out while I canvassed the crowd.
At about 9:45ish most of the people were there, I'd say in the neighborhood of 400 or so, and Joe Wheeler came up to speak after Kathy introduced him. Joe spoke about his time in Iraq and got a good reception while people were still filing in and trying to get situated.
Following Joe was Ed Griffin who had quite a good speech. I was surprised though he didn't make it about the Federal Reserve; rather, he spent a lot of time talking about what has become of our elections and called the process by which people decide which candidate to favor as "a crooked game of football pool". That got quite a bit of applause. He spoke for 10 minutes and most people appeared as thought hey enjoyed him.
Next up was Joe Bannister. By now the crowd was at about max capacity with 600 or so people, and Joe got a good round of opening applause. He spoke about his time in the I.R.S. and what he's been doing since then. He spoke about Freedom to Fascism briefly, really just as a way to segue into talking about the system by which the I.R.S. collects funds. He got quite a bit of applause before Justin Raimondo got brought up to filibuster with the time until Dr. Paul arrived.
Justin gave a good speech about his time covering politics and how he got to know and support Ron Paul, but you could tell people were getting excited that Ron Paul would be there soon, however his entrance was actually quite good. He came on a side path with very little entourage, no announcement and no attention drawn to himself; he was dressed totally normally and I almost didn't notice him even though he was only about 10 ft. away. In fact you could only see him from one far wing of the audience until he came up to the area behind the stage.
Dr. Paul talked with people for about 5 minutes until it was his time to speak on stage.
As usual, he got the spontaneous Ron Paul chant W/Standing Ovation.
He gave a great speech, as usual. He spoke clearly and concisely on every issue with absolutely no notes, and I was surprised he took the time he did to address the environment; which he tied in quite uniquely with private property rights.
He got big applause when he spoke of Iraq, foreign policy in general, the second amendment, but oddly the biggest applause line of his speech was when he said "And we should let young people get Out of social security before it collapses."
His speech went on for about 30 minutes or so, at which time we were supposed to leave for the luncheon. Dr Paul managed to squeeze in yet another radio interview on the way there, and when he showed up he spent quite a bit of time shaking hands and talking with people. My friend and myself got to shake his hand, snap a couple photos, and had quite a nice conversation about getting young people involved in the campaign (both Mark and I are seventeen).
The luncheon served as sort of a mini briefing; Kent Snyder addressed us and gave us a rundown of the campaign, it's current status and what they were up to. He took some questions, usually having to do with campaign structure, and then Dr. Paul came up to give another short speech. He talked about the campaign's goals for the future in terms of fundraising numbers and registered supporters. He said he was keeping a healthy skepticism but when he recounted the events of the last few months you could tell he was happy.
Anyway, he left right after the speech; Lew Moore said he had More radio interviews at his district office in Texas and needed to catch his plane.
We spent some more time at the luncheon hall where we met people from all over and exchanged literature, DVD’s, fliers, bumper stickers and signage. I met with the preliminary members of the North bay meet up group, since we're so far removed from the main bay area we thought it would be a good idea to make a new offshoot. I personally met people who were there from Washington state, New York, Colorado and all over California. We cleared out a bit later for a wedding and headed back to the rally site. When we got there it had already wound down, and stuff was being deconstructed. We collected the remaining donations, loaded up some hardware and then dumped as much as we could into campaign merchandise and contributions.
To the 20 or so die-hard meet up organizers who were there Lew Moore stuck around to give a speech. He rounded everybody up below a tree and we talked for about 10 minutes about the mechanics of the campaign. He assured us that Ron Paul would be back if we could organize something like this again, and we exchanged ideas for awhile on things like Ames and Spartanburg/Greenville.
He talked with people basically as long as they wanted, and we took some group photos with him.
So by this time it was about 3 in the afternoon, and we were getting ready for our hundred mile drive back here to Windsor. We slapped a bunch of fender magnets and bumper stickers on my friend’s jeep (tastefully) and we got on our way. We got bottled up in gridlock on 19th avenue going through San Francisco, and then I noticed an elderly gentleman in the lane next to me, he said; "Excuse me there, Do you have any campaign literature!" I couldn't help but smile, and I was lucky we had a bunch of stuff in the front seat. We eased our cars a bit closer and going about 25 mph down 19th avenue in bumper to bumper traffic I leaned out the window and handed him some pamphlets across the lane in full view of...oohhhh.... a couple hundred people at least.
This episode repeated itself a bit later; we were stopped in front of a BART platform and another gentleman on the platform said "Who is Ron Paul!?!" My friend Mark responded by grabbing about 10 pamphlets, bumper stickers and the like and handing them to the guy on the platform, who proceeded to pass them out.
That’s about it, I just got back a little while ago.
Sorry the post was so long, but that rally got me good and fired up.
Anyway, if you got any questions about the rally, ask and I'll answer as best I can.
- Ed D'Emidio
Hey all, my name's Ed, I've been watching the forums for a while, just haven't registered until now.
Anyway, I went to Dr. Paul's rally today in Mountain View, and if I may I'll just share with you what I did and saw.
My friend mark and I left the North bay about 5:30 a.m. and got to the park quite a bit earlier than we were supposed to. We showed up about 7, when only Kathy - the meet up leader - and her team were there assembling the stage.
We didn't have anything to do so we volunteered to help; first bringing in tables and chairs, then directing people to their seating areas and getting the connections for the bloggers setup.
About a dozen or so people arrived between 7 and 8, which was cool cause we weren't anywhere near done with the stage or merchandise areas
.Come about 8:30 Kathy had us start gathering up pamphlets, contribution forms and envelops to be passed out later, and in the meantime we kept directing people to try and keep a reasonably well organized seating area. Come about 9:00 people started to file in from three different directions en masse, and we abandoned showing people where to sit, they all pretty much knew how to keep up the terraced seating.
The first speaker to arrive was Ed Griffin (I got to set up his chairs!) followed by Joe Bannister, Joe Wheeler and Justin Raimondo. The guests were very outgoing. Virtually all their time before they were set to speak was spent in small groups, talking to people and getting people pumped up for the rally. We started passing out contribution sheets and pamphlets to everyone who wanted them, and I was fortunate to find somebody from Southern California who had a huge stack of bumper stickers which people were clamoring for, so he let me pass em' out while I canvassed the crowd.
At about 9:45ish most of the people were there, I'd say in the neighborhood of 400 or so, and Joe Wheeler came up to speak after Kathy introduced him. Joe spoke about his time in Iraq and got a good reception while people were still filing in and trying to get situated.
Following Joe was Ed Griffin who had quite a good speech. I was surprised though he didn't make it about the Federal Reserve; rather, he spent a lot of time talking about what has become of our elections and called the process by which people decide which candidate to favor as "a crooked game of football pool". That got quite a bit of applause. He spoke for 10 minutes and most people appeared as thought hey enjoyed him.
Next up was Joe Bannister. By now the crowd was at about max capacity with 600 or so people, and Joe got a good round of opening applause. He spoke about his time in the I.R.S. and what he's been doing since then. He spoke about Freedom to Fascism briefly, really just as a way to segue into talking about the system by which the I.R.S. collects funds. He got quite a bit of applause before Justin Raimondo got brought up to filibuster with the time until Dr. Paul arrived.
Justin gave a good speech about his time covering politics and how he got to know and support Ron Paul, but you could tell people were getting excited that Ron Paul would be there soon, however his entrance was actually quite good. He came on a side path with very little entourage, no announcement and no attention drawn to himself; he was dressed totally normally and I almost didn't notice him even though he was only about 10 ft. away. In fact you could only see him from one far wing of the audience until he came up to the area behind the stage.
Dr. Paul talked with people for about 5 minutes until it was his time to speak on stage.
As usual, he got the spontaneous Ron Paul chant W/Standing Ovation.
He gave a great speech, as usual. He spoke clearly and concisely on every issue with absolutely no notes, and I was surprised he took the time he did to address the environment; which he tied in quite uniquely with private property rights.
He got big applause when he spoke of Iraq, foreign policy in general, the second amendment, but oddly the biggest applause line of his speech was when he said "And we should let young people get Out of social security before it collapses."
His speech went on for about 30 minutes or so, at which time we were supposed to leave for the luncheon. Dr Paul managed to squeeze in yet another radio interview on the way there, and when he showed up he spent quite a bit of time shaking hands and talking with people. My friend and myself got to shake his hand, snap a couple photos, and had quite a nice conversation about getting young people involved in the campaign (both Mark and I are seventeen).
The luncheon served as sort of a mini briefing; Kent Snyder addressed us and gave us a rundown of the campaign, it's current status and what they were up to. He took some questions, usually having to do with campaign structure, and then Dr. Paul came up to give another short speech. He talked about the campaign's goals for the future in terms of fundraising numbers and registered supporters. He said he was keeping a healthy skepticism but when he recounted the events of the last few months you could tell he was happy.
Anyway, he left right after the speech; Lew Moore said he had More radio interviews at his district office in Texas and needed to catch his plane.
We spent some more time at the luncheon hall where we met people from all over and exchanged literature, DVD’s, fliers, bumper stickers and signage. I met with the preliminary members of the North bay meet up group, since we're so far removed from the main bay area we thought it would be a good idea to make a new offshoot. I personally met people who were there from Washington state, New York, Colorado and all over California. We cleared out a bit later for a wedding and headed back to the rally site. When we got there it had already wound down, and stuff was being deconstructed. We collected the remaining donations, loaded up some hardware and then dumped as much as we could into campaign merchandise and contributions.
To the 20 or so die-hard meet up organizers who were there Lew Moore stuck around to give a speech. He rounded everybody up below a tree and we talked for about 10 minutes about the mechanics of the campaign. He assured us that Ron Paul would be back if we could organize something like this again, and we exchanged ideas for awhile on things like Ames and Spartanburg/Greenville.
He talked with people basically as long as they wanted, and we took some group photos with him.
So by this time it was about 3 in the afternoon, and we were getting ready for our hundred mile drive back here to Windsor. We slapped a bunch of fender magnets and bumper stickers on my friend’s jeep (tastefully) and we got on our way. We got bottled up in gridlock on 19th avenue going through San Francisco, and then I noticed an elderly gentleman in the lane next to me, he said; "Excuse me there, Do you have any campaign literature!" I couldn't help but smile, and I was lucky we had a bunch of stuff in the front seat. We eased our cars a bit closer and going about 25 mph down 19th avenue in bumper to bumper traffic I leaned out the window and handed him some pamphlets across the lane in full view of...oohhhh.... a couple hundred people at least.
This episode repeated itself a bit later; we were stopped in front of a BART platform and another gentleman on the platform said "Who is Ron Paul!?!" My friend Mark responded by grabbing about 10 pamphlets, bumper stickers and the like and handing them to the guy on the platform, who proceeded to pass them out.
That’s about it, I just got back a little while ago.
Sorry the post was so long, but that rally got me good and fired up.
Anyway, if you got any questions about the rally, ask and I'll answer as best I can.
- Ed D'Emidio
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