Right as I was leaving work today, John wrote my facebook wall asking if I wanted to go to the Biden rally in South Philly tonight. I gave him a call back, thinking, well, why the heck not, and we met up a little after 8pm to take the Broad Street Line down to Oregon where the event was being held.
There was a pretty long line wrapping from the rally area far along the sidewalk, but there was a helpful volunteer with a sign that said "end of line here". Good thing we got there when we did, because suddenly tons of people showed up behind us.
Then some random guy walked by asking if we wanted tickets to go on stage. I didn't pay any attention to him, but John chased him down and paid $25 each for these yellow tickets from some labor boss (we assume). They checked us through security and then sort of shoved us towards this weird area outside of the main standing
zone in front of the stage.
I was pretty skeptical but then we actually did get to go on the freaking stage!
They handed out signs to us, told us to turn our phones off, and to smile and cheer and stand up when Biden came out.
He didn't show up for a long time, but they had a nun lead a prayer, then one of the campaign organizers for South Philly spoke, Bob Brady (congressman) spoke, Mayor Nutter spoke, Ed Rendell spoke, the governor of maryland spoke (badly... O'Malley was his name), some guy from the Phillies, and finally Joe Biden at about 11:15pm. We cheered, he did a short version of the stump speech, and then shook hands with people in the main crowd while we just stood on the bleachers and waited.
It was a great way to spend the last night before the election. Lots of exhortations to get out the vote, to not be complacent, in general I was pretty impressed by the organization of the event and how on message the speakers were.
Thanks to John!
