R.F.A. - Post rally report - Ventura

[Rabid Dog]

We had another amazing rally - huge turnout (300+) but what made it special was our memorial for Sgt. Bitz (a local man killed in action last week)and our closing ceremony. Once again, very emotional and moving and wonderful.

[Rabid Dog]

We have had the good fortune of having Gary, a Viet-Nam vet, serve as M.C. for our rallies. Today he did a masterful job of putting together an impromptu memorial for a fallen soldier from Ventura County. We were just going to do a small dedication at the end of the rally. We didn't even mention it to the mother of Sgt. Bitz because we wanted to leave her alone in her grief. Any - she was there along with Sgt. Bitz's extended family and we had a wonderful memorial. Hundreds of rally people encircled the grieving party and Gary lead a service. It was wonderful and very moving. Gary is also a lurker so Gary if you are out there, thank you for all your work.

We also had a great closing ceremony - once again orchestrated by Gary including the Pledge of Allegiance lead by the Boy Scouts, Taps (live and in person), Amazing Grace sung beautifully by a rally attendee and a closing prayer led by the pastor of a local church.

[Rabid Dog]

I really choked when Gary gave me the opportunity to thank everyone by name today at our closing ceremony and I apologize for that. All that ran through my head was our handles - mayflower madame, Jillm, Cindyloo, merry10, jeni, seabeespouse, ........ etc., and I just froze! So I lumped you all together as freerepublic.com people and gave a special acknowledgement to our military spouses. Hope this is O.K.!!!

We are going to move to a once a month (last Sunday in the month) for our big rally push. I'm going to see if I can offload some of the work on some non-freepers. There will continue to be rallies there every Sunday so attend as you can but we will focus as a chapter on the end of the month rally.

[Moonmad27]

Excellent event! Thanks to all of y'all for your hard work in arranging it. I expected the crowd to be smaller than last week, but it seemed larger and even more enthusiastic! It was so kind of the family to go around and say thanks to all of us - there are not enough words to say back to them. I left and when I came back by the Govt Center at about 2 PM I noticed a number of police standing around and several police cars around. Had there been a problem?

[Rabid Dog]

There was a fight between a chihauhau and a pitbull. The the owners of the respective dogs got into it. The owner of the Chihauhau left the rally, yelled C_ _ _S_ _ _ _ _ to the owner of the pitbull and the owner of the pitbull reach into the car and punched him in the face. I missed all of it!! I guess about 5 or 6 people called 911.

We also had a couple of independent anti-war disrupters come by and they got U.S.A'ed off the corner. I got the impression from the Pro-Troops/PRO-USA people that they are really sick and tired of the anti-war bunch and would have gladly kicked the disrupters a_ _'s if there weren't a bunch of women and children around.

I don't know if any of you witnessed the "dogfight" but if you did, the cops would like to talk to you to find out what happened. Freepmail me and I will give you the police contact.

[merry10]

My daughter will talk to the police. She watched the whole thing.

[Rabid Dog]

Thanks - I'll freep mail the contact person at the police department.

[Rabid Dog]

Make that I will freepmail YOU the contact person. (Sounded like the policeman was a freeper in my last post)

[ToriJasmine]

You guys did a great job putting this together. When I arrived I saw the ABC news van. Did anyone see any other reporters?

[hoppity]

Hey Rabid . Does this show up for you. I want to test before I post my photos. Hoppity

[Rabid Dog]

BEAUTIFUL!!!!

[Rabid Dog]

We had tons of news coverage earlier in the day because of the little memorial we had for Sgt. Bitz. Channel 9 was there, Channel 3, and I believe Channel 5 or 7 or both. It was a lovely memorial.

[Rabid Dog]

Hoppity just posted some great rally pictures - look for the "Ventura Rally Photos" thread!!! Yeah Hoppity!!

[capitan_refugio]

I am sure that you saw you were quoted in the Times today (Tuesday) - in a peace rally article of all things.

Nice job! I got as close Sunday as a drive by on the way to Ojai (cut up Victoria, then west on 126 to get back to 101 and 33). I had the big pewter Yukon XL with the wimpy horn! It looked like you had at 1:00 pm well over 100 people.

You all made us proud ... again!!!

[Rabid Dog]

Misquoted on everything but the "time warp" comment. They wanted to have a "poor, pitiful me" slant for the anti-war people. I never said the anti-war people were anti-american; I just said that I hoped that if they were truly anti-war that they were out there during the Bosnia and Somalia situation. Freeper Jillm was quoted as well - she's all fired up now!!! She was not happy with the whiney tone of the peace people.

[capitan_refugio]

The Los Angeles Times misquoted somebody???

I'm shocked. Shocked, I say!