The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was incredible.
I have never in my life seen so many people all trying to get to the same place - and being so polite about it. Sure, in the 40-minute line to get a ticket at the Dunn-Loring metro station in VA there was a guy who was extremely upset about having gotten train tickets. I don't think I'll ever understand that. The trains, similarly, were packed beyond belief. Our station was the second-to-furthest from the city on the Orange line east and we still barely had room to breathe on the train. A 40-or-so minute ride into the city took us past the other stations, each with people lined up five and six deep along the entire length of the platform headed into the city. We waved to people from inside the train - those of us that still had room to move our hands. Along the way, the train was delayed due to a further ahead train getting stalled because it had too many passengers. The train emptied out at Smithsonian - heaven help anybody who wanted to get off sooner or later. Hundreds of people climbed the escalators (almost all of which were broken) out into the sunlight on the National Mall.
Despite the rapidly-forming crowd, we took a nice walk down to the opposite end of the mall to visit the Lincoln Memorial, then headed back amongst more and more ralliers headed for the stage. When it all began at noon, I was stuck just in front of the news trailers and just behind the family reunification tent. From this location, none of us could see anything, and at the beginning, we could barely hear. The volume was reconciled quickly, though, so I was able to follow along with the rally by sound. Occasionally, I was able to see the top half of one of the giant screens for a few seconds, enough to catch a glimpse of the giant paper-mache Colbert puppet and little else. Still, despite the lack of personal space, my inability to see the stage, and the constant sand raining down on us, the Rally was incredible. (The sand, I feel, I must explain: between us and the news vans, there were exhaust vents from the subway, surrounded with sandbags to prevent people from blocking them. Some people decided to stand on these sandbags, thus breaking them open and showering people with sand every time they shifted. They must have been on the side of fear, because they were by no means sane and reasonable.)
Stewart's closing speech - the one serious moment of the Rally - was excellent. There were some lines that resonated with me - especially the statement that, "If everything is amplified, we can hear nothing." I am looking forward to getting home from work tonight so I can watch the Rally and see what actually happened on stage to go along with the audio track I heard.
Despite the trains and the sand and not being able to see, I was immeasurably pleased to be present for this event. It felt less like being apathetic at home and more like actually exerting effort to maybe help fix some things. At least to be counted among those hundreds of thousands who attended to beg for a bit of rationality to return to the political discourse in our fair nation.
After the rally, I stepped into what may go down in history as the largest Reddit meetup. I swapped QR codes with strangers who, after short conversations, were no longer strangers. I got my Rally shirt, I mingled with the crowd, and I got a glimpse of the Reddit admins, internet superheroes in our crowd. Everybody from Reddit was friendly and excited to be there. We braved the Metro one more time in an effort to make it to Dupont Circle for the afterparty, but an at-capacity bar combined with standing up since 9am led to me throwing in the towel and grabbing some dinner elsewhere, though the restaurant was still chock-full of Redditors.
The Rally was incredible. It was my first foray into political activism. It was the social event of the year. I was impulsive and social. I left my comfort zone far, far, far behind. I don't regret a second of it.
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