In a Chevy in a hurry on a very warm day to free Brad Manning

[hfojvt]

After he got drenched and froze during the making of the video for "The day she left Tulsa (In a Chevy in a Hurry in the pouring down rain)", Wade Hayes joked that he was gonna make his next song "in a Chevy in a hurry on a very warm day".

Having just gone out for an hour on a sweltering summer day in Kansas to see the protest for Bradley Manning, I think there are some obvious disadvantages to very warm days that he might want to consider. I sorta feel like I am melting.

It seemed to be a crowd of about 100, including some newspeople. I recognized Mike Mahoney from KMBC 9 and a van from Fox 4 was driving up as I left. The police presence was not that huge. Not like it was when some dozen anarchists were protesting and metropolitan street was lined with police cars. But there were a number of vehicles at various locations and planes and helicopters flying overhead.

The first speaker (that I heard, I may have been late) was pretty good, and got the crowd involved. He was talking about materialism and militarism, although I could not help noticing some nice cars that had presumably driven hundreds of miles to get here. After sitting back in the shade, I offered a cold bottle of water to a couple standing in the sun. After watering my plants before going, I thought I should bring some water for the protestors, but I was happy to see a guy handing out water bottles from a case.

I talked to the couple a bit. They were standing back, so I wondered if they were counter protestors. They said they were curious, having no idea what this was about or that this guy was even here. So I talked to them a bit and talked to the cameraman from KMBC. There were more speakers and as the third guy asked the veterans to come forward, I left to check out the scene on metropolitan, which was less fortified than I expected.

They said they were anticipating 300 to 1,000 but it did not seem nearly that large to me, but people were trickling away or standing over a block away in the shade even when I first got there, and three more were leaving even as I left. I think I saw Proud2Blib there, so she may have a different report, and I will see what the local media says.

Ahg, I have been home twenty minutes now and still haven't cooled off. I got a shipment of books today, before I left. "American Indian: Holocaust and survival" by Russell Thornton, "American Holocaust" by David Stannard, and "A little matter of genocide" by Ward Churchill. So better to be inside reading, than outside listening to speeches on a very warm day.

Oh yeah, there was a guy with a big sign that said "Free Manning, Jail Obama" and plenty of cameras. One guy towards the front was apparently being interviewed even while the others spoke.