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Thursday, February 21, 2008

Clinton Rally at UTBTSC campus




I paid my thirty cents to cross back into B’ville, got back to my car to get ready for the night and at 5:30 went in line to wait with all the other visitors for Senator Clinton. It was a very long line, of mostly students but also older people like me who just wanted to hear her speak. There were very few non-Latinos. A group of three young boys supporting Ron Paul stood away from us across the walk way, and into their bullhorns yelled negative comments about Sen Hillary Clinton.

“She has lost the last eleven primaries” said one kid holding a Ron Paul sign.
“How many has Ron Paul won?” I yelled back, causing most around me to clap at my comment. That annoyed the boys. I approached one of them who turned out to be a mere 16 years old. He called me a Communist because “You are voting for Hillary”. Oh yeah? I am here to listen to her speak. If all Ron Paul supporters are this rude they have no business campaigning for a lost cause/ All they did tonight was try to rile up the audience, but they got slammed back by others besides me. In the end they stood in a far corner. No one listened to them and they slowly retreated to a dark corner where people ignored them. My experience with them was very negative tonight. I hope Ron Paul realizes what kind of rude, ignorant supporters are abusing his name and reputation.

I ended up making friends with the two young students ahead of me, Vanessa, a slightly plump nursing student, and her girlfriend Christi, a slender auburn criminologist student. A few minutes later Vanessa’s mother and brother Troy joined us and we had a conversation about the Iraq War and politics until we were finally let into the student compound at 7pm.

We stood near the back of the bleachers. My flash wasn’t working even though I was at one point just five feet away from Clinton when she came by, 45 minutes after she was due to speak. She wore a dark pants suit with heeled shoes and her hair was stiffly sprayed in place. My photos were all bad. Vanessa ended up getting a photo with Clinton and her mom. I envied her for that! I was getting a sore back from the long wait, even sitting down by 9pm A couple with their young child blocked my view of Clinton and the students to my left kept bumping into me when they’d make pyramids with each other.

Other than meeting Vanessa and Christi I did not have a good time. The audio was poor and never heard a full sentence of what Clinton said. She came on stage at 9:20pm and twenty minutes later left, staying long enough to shake hands and then leaving.

It was after 10pm when I got back to my van. Forty miles later I was back at the La Quinta parking lot for the night. Both of my big toes had hot spots on them and my legs were sore from the three-hour pavement pounding and three-hour standing.

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