912 Personal Accounts

This will be a collection of stories recounting 912.

One Account.
There was some anger yesterday, there was a lot of frustration, but mostly there was a multitude of Americans determined to have their voices heard. I am talking about people of all colors. I am talking about people with long hair, short hair, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians, conservatives, cops, teachers,college students, grandmas, grandpas, great grandmas, moms, dads and kids.......


A Second Account
The excitement was tangible, preparing for the most important trip of my life to this point. This was not a vacation, and it wasn’t going to feel like one, either. My dad, my boss, and I were gearing up for an exhaustive amount of traveling. We were going to Washington, DC, to show them we are not going to put up with big (and intrusive) government or a new American brand of Socialism. Period........

Third Account (includes pix)
Arrived at the Vienna Metro station in Fairfax shortly after 9:00 AM to take the train into town. When we arrived, the lines for the ticket dispensers were huge, extending far into the parking lots on both sides of the station.

Fourth and Fifth Accounts
I am still stunned from the march yesterday.....I looked up Pennsylvania Avenue and was blown away. It was filled from the White House to the Capitol, a distance of 1.5 miles.I’ve been to a lot of demonstrations in Washington, starting with the anti war protests in the 1960s, and I have never seen anything like this. From ground level it was impossible to guess the numbers of people.

Sixth Account
I made a point to walk to the highest point of the hill and look out and you could not see the end. The stream line of signs ran from Capital Hill to the White House and on the over side from Capital Hill to Union Station. This was as far as one can see.

I will add more accounts as I find them.........don't forget to read my post on this amazing day, right below this one.

Seventh Account
Since we were there, Congress seems different. Maybe it was us. Maybe the pendulum is swinging. Whatever it is, the Dems seem less hostile and snarky to us Astroturfers, and the GOP seems to have gotten a spine.
What no one seems to understand is that all the photos, and all the counts, and all the kings men couldn’t put Humpty back together again.
We are the tip of the iceburg. We are awake. We aren’t going away. We aren’t going to let up. A whole bunch of us read Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, and we don’t have anything else to do. Grandma and Grampa have money. Great Grandma and Grandpa don’t want to get snuffed. And our grandkids don’t want to pay for this.
And here is the real scary part. We loved it. Next time we’re bringing some friends. If they didn’t hear us then, just wait. They will.
What is that song Tom Petty sang after 9/11? And we won’t back down….

Eighth Account
Being there all by myself was terrific, in some ways.......when you are a party of one, you can slip into small places, and this was necessary the day of the 912 March....in order to get anywhere close to the action. I really had NO IDEA that people were going to show up in large numbers. The morning of, I did not hurry to get downtown, and I remember wondering if I would find a big crowd, or if it was going to be more of a bust.

So I was really amazed at the number of Americans who came out.......I got into the march line and headed down PA Ave, and when I got to the end, it was packed in the area leading up to the Capitol grounds. I was frustrated having to walk behind slow moving people....to snake around wherever it is that the police wanted us to go.......so I just stepped over some kind of a fence and got right onto the grounds. I maybe was not supposed to do that, but there was no one stopping me, and I did not realize until a couple of days ago that I was probably breaching a barrier I was not supposed to cross. I read that they were letting 80,000 into the immediate grounds, and after that, no one else gets in, unless someone leaves. So since I made it inside, I guess they actually had 80,001!

And then when I got in, I chose not to get too comfortable. I mostly just kept moving to get different vantage points. There would have been no way to do this with a big group of people. I feel like I really saw a lot more of the place than many who parked themselves in chairs or on steps and were then afraid to get up and lose their spots.........I just wanted to soak up what was going on everywhere I could manage to get to. The only limits were my eventual exhaustion, and the fact that the stage area was packed for so far back, you seriously could not see the stage or the speakers. I remember getting close enough to THINK I was seeing the stage. One of the speakers seemed to have a huge head, and I thought that was so strange. When the next person also had a big head, I realized I was not looking at the stage, but was looking at a video screen. I really never even found the stage..........I felt like I was close to the Capitol, but that stage, which was between me and the Capitol, had to be very very far away from me.

My exhaustion kept me from going to the mall, and that is the only part I really regret. I wish I had gotten close enough to see that from ground level. I am told there were people all the way back to the Washington Monument.........I could see the grassy area was clear......but people were telling me that people were crowding under the trees, This I would not have been able to view from my spot near the statues at the Capitol Reflecting Pond. Later I learned that the grass was reserved for other events, and that is why that grassy area was empty.

Throughout the day, I was able to stop and talk with whoever, whenever, and I could eat when I needed to, and there was no one to annoy with my photo stops, either. So I really did just love the day. It was only at the end, that I realized that it would have been terrific to talk with a group of attendees over dinner. I had heard that Andrew Wilkow was going to address a group at a dinner over in Virginia. I REALLY would have liked to have been there for that! But I had forgotten to look up the group, had forgotten the name of the hotel, and had not followed through to find out if I could even get to that particular hotel by metro, or even if it was possible for me to attend. If I was not so darn tired, I would have asked around and figured it out. But heading back to take a shower seemed like the most important thing in the world at that point.

Something to tell the grandkids, my attendance at 912. Even when I was there, and could see it was huge, I really did not think of it as a history making thing. But now I really suspect that it was. No matter how the media has tried to minimize the size of it, Congress KNOWS and things are going to be different from now on. ACORN got defunded this week, for example. The changes may be big or the changes may be subtle, but we have been heard.