For those who are interested in the next American elections: Here you can even see pictures of the Rally in Alaska:
[The] Alaska < /SPAN>Women Reject Palin rally was to be held outside on the lawn in front of the Loussac Library in midtown Anchorage. Home made signs were encouraged, and the idea was to make a statement that Sarah Palin does not speak for all Alaska women, or men.. I had no idea what to expect.
The rally was organized by a small group of women, talking over coffee. It made me wonder what other things have started with small groups of women talking over coffee. It´s probably an impressive list. These women hatched the plan, printed up flyers, posted them around town, and sent notices to local media outlets. One of those media outlets was KBYR radio, home of Eddie Burke, a long-time uber-conservative Anchorage talk show host. Turns out that Eddie Burke not only announced the rally, but called the people who planned to attend the rally "a bunch of socialist baby-killing maggots," and read the home phone numbers of the organizers aloud over the air, urging listeners to call and tell them what they thought. The women, of course, received some nasty, harassing and threatening messages.
I felt a bit apprehensive. I´d been disappointed before by the turnout at other rallies. Basically, inAnchorage, if you can get 25 people to show up at an event, it´s a success. So, I thought to myself, if we can actua lly get 100 people there that aren´t sent by Eddie Burke, we´ll be doing good. A real statement will have been made. I confess, I still had a mental image of 15 demonstrators surrounded by hundreds of menacing "socialist baby-killing maggot" haters.
It´s a good thing I wasn´t tailgating when I saw the crowd in front of the library or I would have ended up in somebody´s trunk.. When I got there, about 20 minutes early, the line of sign wavers stretched the full length of the library grounds, along the edge of the road, 6 or 7 people deep! I could hardly find a place to park. I nabbed one of the last spots in the library lot, and as I got out of the car and started walking, people seemed to join in from every direction, carrying signs.
Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organize rs had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn´t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn´t happen here.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/17/234920/755/57/598966
