It's Time for a MASSIVE Support Rally!

As a FREEper I am sick of the coverage of the anti-war goons on nightly news. It is time all truly patriotic Americans had a NATIONAL rally to support the war. If the polls say 75% of people support the war, let's prove it! From coast to coast on one day there should be simultaneuos rallies. These would be so HUGE as to shock the unwashed, maggot infested liberal idiots. What do ya say? Can we do it?

Agreed. Bob J and the FR network did this last weekend. 150,000 approx. turned out. There are more rallies this coming weekend all across the country. But we do need a day where in every capital of every state perhaps there is a stadium full of Americans gathered to support our troops, our President, the effort to free Iraq and disarm the WMD and to remove the Saddam terrorist regime from power. The problem is - the people supporting and PAYING for the terrorists have more money available then those who support our nation and our troops. Or do they? Such a huge outpouring will take money. Lots of it. Plus lots of volunteers. Would you help work on a rally near you?

The problem is people want to go to these rallys, but aren't there when it comes time to organize them. Last weekend we had a rally in Lansing, MI and of all the freepers in the state only a handful were there when it came time to knuckle down and get to work. We had info asking for help on the state message board for over a week! We also discovered it's difficult to get the local paper to promote such an event. It's just not as exciting for them because we're not being radical and getting arrested. However we were picked up by the AP and had stories in many papers across the U.S. the following day. CNN also ran a blip on their news ticker that night.

In my opinion, we should continue with these local rallies across America, it fits the conservative mold better and we get more people out. In other words, they are successful for us. There may come a time when we can get tens of thousands out in the street in one city, but I don't think we're there yet.

The libs have an advantage in that they already have a structure (communications, funding, students) in place for these large events in liberal cities. Really, how hard is it to find a hundred thousand communists in NY?

I've always said that our answer to the liberal problem does not lie in the the big cities like New York or seats of political power like DC. Our answer lies in energizing the tens of millions of slumbering conservatives in every town across the country.

Sure, I'm all for it as long as someone else plans it this time. I'm tired and discouraged and I finally have my life back and I want to keep it. Maybe I'm selfish but jaysgal is right, everyone wants to come but nobody wants to plan it.

Unless we can get a big sponsor this time, where are our Clear Channel radio sponsors? It's just not worth it. I can't figure out why if 75% of the population supports the war why we couldn't get more than 500 of them to get off their butts to come out and prove it. The anti-war protest had an estimated 6-7000 at the same location.

We put our own $$ into this w/o any offers of $$ from anyone. He!! a lot of local FReepers not only didn't bother to show up but didn't even respond at all to the threads or requests of help.

I know I'm ranting but I ended up with a cold after all the stress of last week and I'm bitchy and tired, I know I sound it too.

Count me out this time.

I'll show up as a member of the audience, I'll even bring my flags and signs.

MKM

I am open to the idea of putting another Rally together. I will be traveling for business Sun - Wed on this week and Mon - Wed the following (big help I am). I think we could put another one together and not aim to line up speakers etc. It could be informal at the Captiol or elsewhere where we march or simply rally in an area with permit.

The way to go may be to contact some local Radio Stations and see if they would be interested in organizing it with us assisting...we might look beyond the talk radio stations and partner with a music station.

Let me know what you think

I can't figure out why if 75% of the population supports the war why we couldn't get more than 500 of them to get off their butts to come out and prove it.

A lot of this has to do with media bias. If people do not know about your rally, they obviously cannot come. In some cities, Freepers were able to find a sympathetic local paper, or -- even better -- a local radio personality who would help them hype the event. In a small number of cities, the radio folks were ahead of the Freepers, organizing a rally before we even started.

But that's a minority of cities. As we've all seen, most newspaper types will devote their entire front page to six aging hippies with anti-war signs before they will put a single line in the "community events" column on page C-29 for anything we do. That's our reality, and we have operate within that.

Although FR as a whole has a huge readership, fewer people than you might think visit the rally announcement threads. Last week, on the eve of Liberty Weekend, the bigger rally announcement threads (NYC, LA, Chicago, DC) were getting 150 to 200 visitors a day. Smaller cities were getting less. It's likely that many of those people were outside the area; they were just looking in to see what was going on. This is a good place to advertise for additional organizers, but no one should expect large numbers of attendees from notices on FR. We may be mighty, but we are still a tiny fraction of the population.

As we continue with these things, we will get better at them. One thing we definitely learned from this round is that getting the participation of a local radio station is the single biggest thing we can do to get the attendance numbers up. Even where it wasn't a conservative talk-show host, where it was a disk jockey who saw an opportunity to promote himself (can I be a speaker? Yes!), that still worked better than anything else.

There is also a huge regional component. The rally in Anchorage, Alaska (pop. 260,000) drew as many people as the one in New York City. That's not for lack of any effort by our New York Freepers, it's that they live in a place where people vote for Chuckie and Hillary and think that conservatives drag their knuckles on the ground. There are some areas of the country where that is just going to happen, and we have to live with it.

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