Monday, August 06, 2007

The Senator's Visit (Update 1 w/ Video)

Sunday's "Roadside Rally" that Utah for Obama put together was amazing! I only helped a little with the planning, since I had out of state relatives visiting. Nikki Norton headed up the effort, and it really paid off!

We found out Friday that the Senator was going to stop and give a speech (which I'll blog about separately soon), and we couldn't tell anyone until the press was notified on Saturday evening. It was very hard to keep my mouth shut and not tell the whole world! We had expected around 50 - 100 people to show up, and it turns out that we had over 1,000, according to Secret Service estimates.

The next three pictures (taken by climbing some stairs attached to the Visitor's Center) will give you an idea of how many people attended. They were taken about 30 minutes before the Senator arrived, according to the timestamp.
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Far left side of the crowd.
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Center part of the crowd. By the time Barack Obama arrived, there was not an empty spot on that hill, as you can see in later photos.
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Far right side of the crowd.

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Strider had the privilege of introducing Senator Obama when he arrived.

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Strider also had his shirt signed, later.

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During his speech, Senator Obama had people pretty much on every side, so he turned a lot, in order to speak to the whole crowd.

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We had a couple of people take photos for us of the Senator with (mostly) just Utah for Obama Steering Committee members. Mark Rothacher was missing from this one, unfortunately.

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I thought Gail might pass out from excitement!

Here's some video taken by Adam Forgie

(h/t Aramis of Wasatch Watcher)

Here are the news articles, blogs and other people's photos that I know of covering the event. If anyone knows of more, please let me know!

Official Campaign Blog

Mike Place's photos

Salt Lake Tribune and more Salt Lake Tribune.

Photos taken by our group (still growing)

ABC 4 News

Deseret Morning News

MSNBC

Photos of the sign-making party on Yahoo!

Chicago Sun Times

I will update these links as more become available.