Obama table in Madison: May 24 Edition (fifth one in 2008)

zulchzulu

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sun May-25-08 02:14 PM
Original message

Obama table in Madison: May 24 Edition (fifth one in 2008)

Edited on Sun May-25-08 02:57 PM by zulchzulu

It was the fifth Farmers Market Obama table for this year and was a gorgeous spring day with lots of people from all over the globe walking along and choosing from all kinds of locally grown, baked, crafted and political flavors. The Obama table is one feature to many at what the New York Times mentioned "The Dane County Farmers' Market in Wisconsin is now recognized as the largest in the nation, and is still growing."

(Note: I was out of town last weekend, but had someone cover for me)

The night before the tabling, I made sure the weekly war scorecard was updated and visible.

Here's this week's ever growing sad news:

Weekly War Scorecard

Cost of Iraq Occupation:
(running total):
$522,621,143,052
- $4,681 per household.
- $1,721 per person.
- $341.4 million per day

American Deaths:
4,080

American Wounded:
30,039

Iraqi Body Count:
1,213,716

As of May 24, 2008 at 12:00AM

Sources:
www.iraqbodycount.net
www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths....
www.defenselink.mil
www.antiwar.com/casualties
www.costofwar.com

Spring has finally set in and with it an incredible stream of hundreds of people stopping by for Obama buttons, bumper stickers, rally signs and to sign up for emails for the campaign, which pretty much feels like the General Election. As you might see in the photos, we now have a life-size Barack Obama cut-out that is a HUGE HIT! There were lines of people who wanted to get their picture taken with Barack and it made for a fantastic way to get people's interest.

We went through 200+ bumper stickers and even more buttons and stickers. As in the past few weeks before, there were a number of people who stopped by that made road trips to states like Texas, New Mexico, North Carolina, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, Texas. I continue to be absolutely amazed and proud of people that are that inspired and enthusiastic to really follow the grassroots path and do what they can.

The Weekly War Scorecard, which is posted to remind people of the war and its costliness on many levels, was very fitting since a number of war protests were also happening on the Capitol Square as well as a march. A couple Iraq War veterans stopped by. There were a dozen people who stopped by during the whole day that got to get registered to vote in Wisconsin.

Other efforts to get people registered to vote were happening throughout the city as well as an event at the brand new official Obama office for the General Election, which is very close to the Sqaure (PM for details). That's what different about this year: there are Obama offices showing up in critical swing states already and getting people involved.

People were absolutely excited to be able to get their picture taken or have a photo grabbed from with cell phone.

You name it, there was every "demographic" there who wanted to have a photo taken, and what was great about it was getting people more interested than before. Of course, with the usual conversations about when the full campaign will begin were the unfortunate statements by Hillary Clinton concerning mentioning RFK's assassination. I personally thought her statements were out of line and could find no one who thought otherwise.

Despite that ugly bit of news, people were generally very happy to get something to show their support for the campaign.

There is a very good chance that the Obama cut-out will make it to Denver for the Convention. We're planning on a group to be there to watch Obama get officially nominated!

ON EDIT: A short video of the Obama table with people having their photos taken with Barack! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqxvuCi-V2Y

Gobama!