Greetings ottbmare:
We did receive an e-mail alert about a Chicago event for the Federal Building Plaza noon Friday. In my case, a job committment superceeds a noontime rally.
And given NPR is not on my listen list, not a peep about this or the Chicago event in the Chicago MSM market. In fact, this “After Action Report” is the first report read anywhere online.
Frankly, the FloriDUH! shooting circus is seems like a magician’s slight of hand gimmick. Last week was “gun free” Chicagotopia’s 500th 2012 shooting victim and 100th 2012 murder, yet all the MSM covers is FloriDUH!
Cheers,
OLA
I don’t know what can be done to get the word out better. Websites, commercial air time, and social media campaigns are not always easy to arrange and can cost money, which may not be available. Some folks may not be media-savvy enough to figure out the ways the media can be used for free PR. And I’ll bet that the usual outlets, like broadcast and cable news sources, don’t see this as a sexy, fascinating story, so they don’t want to cover it. “If it bleeds, it leads,” as you probably have heard, and we aren’t bleeding. That is one reason I had kind of hoped there would be a counter-protest and perhaps some mild conflict at the rally on the 23rd in DC: it would draw press coverage and gain attention to the problem.
As it is, I see some of the organizers attempting to use social media marketing on FB and Twitter, but very few people respond. Even on Free Republic, I see only seventeen posts on this thread, out of 100,000 Freepers. Did people not see the original thread, or do they just not care? Do they think that if they’re not Roman Catholic that this isn’t an issue for them?
If so, they’re wrong.
Folks, what Father Marcel Guarnizo said in his stirring speech was absolutely true. This fight against the US Department of Health and Human Services is not really about contraception. It’s not about abortion. It’s not about money. It’s about whether an agency of the US government, acting at the will of the president, can take away your First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Can the government force you to do something evil?
If that is the case—if millions of freedom-loving Americans will simply acquiesce while Barack Obama quietly removes our right to believe as we wish—our First Amendment right to freedom of religion will not be our only loss. We will have lost all our Constitutional rights. For if they can take one right, they can take any of them. The HHS mandate establishes the precedent. Gently, almost without notice, we will have been put in the power of a totalitarian government. Without shots being fired; without an invasion; without a goose-stepping army; without a dictator screaming hysterically and giving a Nazi salute. But the effect will be the same. We will have lost our freedom. And once it’s lost, what president will give it back?
Today at 2 p.m., the day before the US Supreme Court begins considering the Constitutionality of Obamacare, the building will be surrounded with praying Americans. I’ll be there, but the weather is supposed to be bad so I suspect not many other people will be. I don’t want to get on the train and go down there myself on a soaking wet afternoon—there are a thousand other things I’d rather do. But someone has to go, and clearly they aren’t getting to the faithful to come out.