Barack the Vote!

Mary and I went to the Obama rally in La Crosse this morning. We arrived around 8:15 (the gate opened at 8am), and discovered that the line to get into the event went was 4+ blocks long, winding it's way from Main and 2nd down to Riverside Park, where it then folded back in the opposite direction because Riverside Park wasn't long enough.

When we finally got to the security check point, we discovered that we couldn't bring in our thermal mugs (which lots of people brought because it was so cold so early in the morning---you should have seen the number of metal mugs thrown into the garbage can at the check point). Which meant Mary was about to go back to the car and chance missing the rally, something neither of us were too happy about. Thankfully a volunteer quietly suggested trying some check points further down... that oddly didn't have any thermal mugs in their garbage. That tip paid off, but due to all of this we went through different check points and got split up for the rest of the rally.

Neither of us got very close, and spent most of our time looking at the back of a heads. But we were both glad to be there, and we enjoyed talking with people we bumped into afterwards.

Mary and I both were moved by one particular statement: when Obama asked the young adults in the audience to serve in the armed forces, to serve in the Peace Corp, to serve in Americorp... in short to serve their country. And in turn he promised that the United States would make it possible for each them to afford a college education. For use that hit home two things we were glad to here Obama reinforce: that college tuition is getting out of hand for the average American, and that we could use some help with that, but at the same time we need to be thinking beyond just ourselves, that we need to be serving others.

How many people were there? The Democratic headquarters in La Crosse printed 14,000 tickets that they handed out to attendees as the waited in line, to be turned in at the security checkpoint. But they ran out. One volunteer after it was all done said she'd heard there was 16,000 in attendance. The La Crosse tribune is currently posting 15,000 in attendance on their website.

For La Crosse Tribune reports on the event, click here.