Rally to Restore Sanity Redux

The Million Moderate March was a peaceful afternoon that was crowded and entertaining as a first-hand experience, and hopeful as I look back on it. Hopeful in a way that I haven't felt in months. The endless rhetoric of doom is tiresome. The Rally to Restore Sanity was an antidote to the 24/7 onslaught of gloom and doom. As Jon Stewart said in his serious reflections at the end of the rally, "These are hard times, these are not end times." So, as I spent the day shoulder to shoulder with my fellow marchers, I took in what was in my immediate sphere as well as what was going on at the Capital stage.

A rally is a risk. There are things that you can control and there are things that you cannot control. The team of Stewart and Colbert were able to script a three hour program of entertainment that deftly wove the musical, the serious and the absurd together in roughly equal measures in order to hold the crowds attention as well as leave them wanting more. And thinking more. Maybe taking the message back to their communities. Let it infect others. The musicians ranged from hip and hop to soul and crooning. They were black, they were white, they were young, they were old, they were Muslim, they were not. It was inclusive and engaging, and very impressive.

But there are things that you cannot control about a rally, and that is who shows up, and how glad do they appear to be there. My fellow rally mates were the most impressive show of the day. Who we were and how we acted was what made the experience for me. We were all ages. Really. My gray hair didn't stand out, and we were interwoven nicely in the crowd. If they had asked us to count off decades and stand accordingly--a 20 year old next to a 30 year old next to a 40 year old and on up it wouldn't have been more of a mixture than it was naturally. We were all colors. We were from all over. The airport was a continuation of the rally--strangers talking about their experiences all day. As Mavis Staples and Jeff Tweedy so compellingly sang, You Are Not Alone.