We Were There!

FINAL POST 9/17

As I sit here at the computer on Constitution Day posting photos from my 9/12 March on DC, I feel a desperate need to close the chapter on my 9/12 experience with a few reflections.

I, like many of you, grew up in the era shadowed by the Vietnam War. The first actual war fought fully and contentiously in the media. I remember being 7 or 8 and sitting in the kitchen of our home watching our mom busily preparing our breakfast as she kept one ear on the radio for war news. My father had served in the Navy and was deployed to Japan years after the 2nd World War, and my Uncle had finished his enlistment in the Army before the war broke out, but we had no one in the family whom the war actually touched. My mom, however, was concerned. The Nation, was concerned.

All to often, families would turn on their televisions to find protest after protest after protest of the war being covered across the spans of the evening news. They heard about celebrities like Jane Fonda going all the way to Vietnam to cackle at the evils of the United States and it's lack of concern for its men in uniform. My parents would go to parties where their neighbors, dressed to the nines with a Camel in one hand and a Johnny Walker in the other, would express their frustrations at what they were seeing in this country to the point that arguments would break out. Bad feelings would ensue. Friendships would be tarnished. Neighborhoods became raggedly torn into sides.

I believe that soon, it became too hard for people like my parents, who simply wanted to entertain polite conversation without being accused of taking sides in a war that generated such animosity, to speak out. I remember not long after the war was over, the favorite phrase of my mother when I would ask whom she selected in whatever election caught my eye, "Honey, we don't talk about Religion or Politics for fear of hurting someone's feelings.

I have rolled this phrase over and over and over in my mind of late. "...for fear of hurting someone's feelings." Isn't this where we began to lose control of our country? Isn't this where the end of the Greatest Generation began to slouch on toward Gomorrah? If you think about it, wasn't the Baby Boomer generation the last of the generations that truly cared about manners?

I would argue yes.

Let's take a quick review of Generation X today.

Today, Kanye West has no qualm about jumping on stage at the Video Music Awards, snatching the microphone out of the hand of a VMA winner as she gives her acceptance speech and rending a personal mission statement regarding the unfairness of the committee's selection onto the unsuspecting audience. Today, people can't stop talking on their cell phones long enough to speak kindly to the woman checking them out at WalMart. Today, children tell their teachers to "screw" themselves in the classroom.

While our generation stood back, keeping our mouths closed "...for fear of hurting someone's feelings", the generations falling after us have been busy running over us with bus after bus after bus filled with counterculture garbage.

We have kept our mouths closed as classrooms have become uncontrollable because parents won't parent their children, while God has been taken out of our schools and our businesses and our Government. We have kept our mouths closed while others around us either merely too lazy to take responsibility for their own actions or to somehow justify their own UNGODLY lifestyles, speak out for the rights of women to terminate their unborn children, gay people to be garnered specific legal rights such as marriage, and to prevent Godly people from praying in historically common forums like High School sports games and graduation ceremonies.

Yes, we have kept our mouths closed, but then only weeks after the Nation elected its 44th President, we began to wake up.

We woke up to find that our Nation is not One Nation Under God anymore, but a Nation composed of 'religious sects' that include everything from Buddhism to Wicken.

We woke up to find that our Nation is not Indivisible. It has been divided into nice little packages of races from African Americans to Muslim Americans that make it easy to pit one group against another.

We woke up to find that Liberty And Justice For All, only applies to those the ACLU tuck into their little corner of the world and that mainstream, God-fearing, Hardworking Americans have been shoved to the back of the bus and told our values don't matter anymore - we're as irrelevant as the 'Living Constitution' we are governed by.

Fine. Well, NOW WE'RE AWAKE and waking up more and more of our friends and neighbors every day.

So, now that we're awake, let's not be afraid to make our feelings known.

Let's not deliberately attack our opponents, but let's not fear hurting the feelings of those that disagree with our values.

Let's not throw aside those wonderful manners and that deep sense of gratitude instilled in us by sets of parents who felt the end of the Great Depression, but let’s not shrink in the face of an opposing opinion because we don’t want to be considered rude.

Let's not use obfuscation and personal attacks to counter aspersions on our characters and views, but instead let’s firmly present facts as a way to educate others about ourselves and our desire to return this country to the roots of its founding – the Constitution.

Sunday, September 13th, the day after my highly emotional March on Washington, I walked breathlessly up the mountains of steps to the Lincoln Memorial. The sight of Lincoln seated, calmly surveying the Washington Monument and his Nations’ Capitol behind, was as impressive as I had imagined. It did not, however, stir in me the raw emotion I felt as I touched the carved text and read the last sentence of the Gettysburg Address, “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

We the people are awake, so now LET'S GET OUT THERE AND TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!

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UPDATE: 9/14

Well, lessons learned for air travel by my intrepid husband and I! After purposely missing our flight yesterday morning in order to stay and actually see more of our Nation's Capitol than the Freedom Plaza and the Capitol Building, we thought we'd just hop another flight home later in the day! NOT!

Not people who fly regularly, we didn't understand that simply (well not simply in the case of Washington D.C. to Baltimore where the minimum travel time between the two cities is 40 minutes!) going to the airport and getting in front of a ticket agent was the way to get on a flight after missing a flight! Consequently, we didn't get back in town until 11:30 today. Which was great, actually, because we were afraid we wouldn't get back at all today, according to the Delta Ticket Reservations line!

Last night we supped on crab in one of the wharf restaurants on the Baltimore harbor, so now we can say we saw downtown Baltimore too - and after a Ravens game no less! All in all, not a bad deal!

I am still, it seems, coalescing thoughts in my head about our spectacular weekend. I have read and re-read what I have written below and I still feel it lacking. In fact, I'm not convinced that I will really be able to give an accurate accounting of not only factual happenings, but my thoughts or feelings about them. The whole experience was that overwhelming and surprising.

Since returning, I've had PILES of laundry to do between the kids and ourselves, so I've had FOX on at various times to keep me occupied and to check out any residual coverage of the march. I am not sure why, but I've been stunned at what I've heard.

I have heard Democrats in every form (legislators, strategists, pollsters) talking about how Health care WILL pass because the American people want it and NEED it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm smart enough to see the spin train coming, but it still just GALLS me! There were over a million people right there in their FRONT YARD telling them to STOP and yet they simply REFUSE. The only thing that makes sense to me at all is the argument that liberals have waited so long for all their 'stars' to line up, with majorities in the senate and the house, they feel they can not accept defeat and will win at all costs, even it that includes ramrodding it down our throats.

Of course the media still insists on backing them up and marginalizing our effort, though most outlets seem to agree that it was the LARGEST peaceful march on Washington D.C. in the history of the nation!

After meeting the people we met this weekend, I think the liberals/progressives are making a HUGE mistake.

Person after person we talked to seemed to echo one single theme - for years and years now I've voted but haven't done anything other than that because I didn't know what I would do, but NOW I have had enough and I'll do whatever it takes to save our Nation from Communism, Socialism, Progressivism, whatever 'ism' isn't CONSTITUTIONALISM!

I truly believe the sleeping giant has awakened and he's becoming more and more awake every day. Each media slight, every hard headed Washington liberal that wags his/her face at the TV camera telling us what we NEED, each attempt to marginalize our efforts only wake him up more.

Now that the march on Washington is over, now that the march on our state Capitol is over, DO NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THAT DARK NIGHT!

Continue to speak out through one of the conservative organizations in our state. Join conservative blog websites. Get others involved. Keep updated on the news and keep your phone and your computer handy so that you can make the necessary phone calls and emails it will take to continue our assault on liberalism in this country. We can and we will WIN THIS FIGHT.

Continue to check out our website this week as I will begin to post the pictures I couldn't while I was there, and look for a video montage of the event to come soon!

I will talk with you soon!

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This morning, as a cold, cloudy sky held sway over Pennsylvania Avenue, Carma Neta, Jean, Carol, David and I took to the street to make the two block walk to 13th street, where we would gather with other patriotic Americans for our walk to the Capitol.

Before 8:30, we'd really been sequestered in the hotel lobby (where, by the way, the Marriot Metro Center manager made any Tea Party member gathered in the lobby with a sign, put the sign away or cover it!). We had seen 30 or 40 people in and out of the lobby in various stages of Patriotic or Tea Party gear, so we had high hopes of a great march, but we weren't really sure what we were going to find.

About 8:45, we left the hotel to make our way to our meeting point. As we walked, lines and lines of people appeared in the streets, holding signs, wearing Tea Party or Patriotic shirts, smiling from ear to ear, all moving in the same direction as we. It was almost surreal, like rivulets of water running down hill to the lowest common point after a torrential downpour.

It was so hard to stay on the task of simply walking because it was FASCINATING simply watching all the people moving in the same direction. Plus, reading signs, looking at clothing and shirts was too much FUN!

Finally we made it to the gathering site and we were STUNNED. I'm not exactly sure what any of us really thought we were going to see or what we really expected, but there, before our eyes were THOUSANDS of bodies swelling like a flood. Don't Tread on Me signs, American Flags, State Flags and - of course - the SIGNS - covered atmospheric real estate like wallpaper.

We joined at the rear of the group as it bumped up against 13th street. Ten or so Tea Party Express volunteers had to join hands to keep stray partiers out of the road (where taxi's drive like they're tearing down a back street in Mexico City!) because NO ONE, it appeared, was really able to concentrate on even saving themselves from traffic, they were so enthralled with the sight!

As we stood at the back of the line watching HUNDREDS of people stream down the sidewalks of Pennsylvania Avenue behind us, finally the police were forced TO CLOSE THE STREET OFF for fear that there would be an accident. As the crowd expanded, we moved more toward the middle of the crowd and into the rest of the Oklahoma contingent over which flew two large Oklahoma flags.

We milled, trying to listen to a speaker on a podium somewhere toward the front of the immense crowd, but inside the sea of people, it was impossible to hear anything but the person adjacent. We stood there slackjawed for at least 15 minutes just watching the crowd continue to expand from ALL SIDES of the street. None of us could really believe what we were seeing because it almost didn't compute.

Finally the crowd began to move down Pennsylvania Avenue and this finally gave us a sense of our surroundings and how many people were standing around us.

Of course, simply reading signs was worth the price of the airfare and this practice continued to make walking and chewing gum at the same time harder than balancing a bowling ball on your head.

Inescapably, the swell of the crowd and the actual excitement of being in the middle of it raised chill bumps on my arms as large as those I got when I saw Sting take the stage with The Police at Lloyd Noble Center in 1981 and I nearly uncontrollably stormed the stage!

The crowd moved like a breathing organism - expanding through wider stretches of road and contracting within smaller ones - as it crawled down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol. Hilariously, a spontaneous scream 'wave' would break out from time to time. Far behind you, you would hear a roar which would crescendo as it went until it hit you and you simply HAD to scream as loud and as long as you possibly could. As your scream died away, you would hear it suddenly build ahead of you and away.

Of course there was spontaneous chanting, "Shame on the media" (as we passed the press building), "Lib-er-ty" and the universal and prolific, "USA, USA, USA..." Occasionally the crowd would break out into bars of “America” or “Na, na, na, na – na, na, na, na – hey, hey, hey – good-bye”.

Suddenly, we were being funneled out onto the plaza like cows through a rodeo chute. It was then that our actual numbers became apparent. There we were, four crazy girls and a guy from Oklahoma City, standing there on the Capitol Plaza at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue, seeing only bodies from the back of the plaza to the Capitol steps. It simply took our collective breath away to the point that all we could do was stand there trying to figure out what to do.

Next to us, standing about five feet above the ground on a concrete barrier was a young girl with a “Don’t Tread On Me” flag. I asked her to take my camera and film a 360 degree arc around the plaza. I didn’t even really think too much about it until I reviewed the file. From where we were in the middle of the plaza, you could only see bodies from there to the Washington Monument behind us and the United States Capitol in front of us. I was shocked. I was elated. I was astounded. I was PROUD.

There was a podium set up just below the Capitol steps, but from behind the reflecting pool it looked like a speck in the distance, so the five of us decided to ‘storm the stage’! We moved forward the best we could - but there were people everywhere and walking was difficult – up to the Capitol steps. Sometime around this time I got a phone call from Mike Lindsey telling me that ABC had estimated a crowd of 2 MILLION people and the Capitol Police were estimating 1.2. I screamed the numbers to the crowd around us and watched the absolute amazement grow on their faces. I think all of us nearly broke down as the reality washed over us that we were part of something historic – the largest march on the Capitol ever recorded.

Until just about 3:45, the five of us stood there waving our flags and our signs, chanting, screaming and bonding with the patriots around us – and of course, reading signs!

It was truly, hands down the greatest experience of my life this far, and I know the rest of our little band felt the same.

Sadly, though no one was rude to us, and we really didn’t run into much opposition (apparently, liberals are smart enough to know when they’re VASTLY outnumbered!), it was clear that the authorities in D.C. were NOT anticipating the crowd that descended upon their city. There were very few bathroom facilities and even fewer trash receptacles.

I mention the latter specifically because a number of us were very concerned about leaving trash behind and damaging our reputation as a movement. Many of us saw pictures following the Inauguration, where trash was left in veritable heaps all over the grass, and none of us wanted it said that we left a mess. WE DID NOT! Any mess resulted when garbage from any of the THREE garbage receptacles overflowed onto the ground around it.

As I finish this post for tonight (I’m sure I’ll think of more to add later!) I can’t help but be somewhat angry. After returning to the hotel room we turned on the TV to get more information on our day only to find out that even FOX has taken to numbering our MILLION TAX PAYER MARCH in the ‘tens of thousands’ and not the million plus we all KNOW were there! Of course, changing the channels, we find CNN is broadcasting pictures of the three bad signs in all the signage available for viewing and not covering any of the truly witty, funny and germanely topic’ed signs we saw all around us from EVERY point of view.

In the end, I don’t imagine that even the news media will be able to spin the March and Rally on D.C. today to meet their needs once the pictures and video of this event go VIRAL on U-Tube.

All we did today was become more resolved and grow stronger in the knowledge that limited, Constitutional government is the ONLY course of rule to follow in this country. And still, the lesson learned today is a lesson not lost on the five of us, nor on any of you reading – WE SURROUND THEM and we will TAKE THIS COUNTRY BACK!

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Wow! Wow! Okay, I can't stop saying WOW!!!

Dave and I met up with Carma Neta, Carol, Jean and Rhonda at the Marriott Metro and finally got something to eat at Hard Rock Cafe! After that, we headed off to the Walter Reed Medical Center for a front gate rally in support of our injured troops with about FOUR or FIVE HUNDRED other patriots!

Of course, down the sidewalk there is the OTHER group...but, on the bright side there were, oh, maybe 19 or 20 of them. Again, WE SURROUND THEM!

There we met Twana Blevins and patriots from North Carolina, South Carolina (they brought FORTY-FIVE BUSSES!!!!), Michigan, New York, Virginia, Maryland and, of course, OKLAHOMA!!

It was immensely satisfying to stand there at the gate and scream our support as the families of the injured drove in and out. It was also immensely satisfying to be able to yell over the rhetoric from our opponents. In fact, there is a group that stands at the front gates to Walter Reed in support of the troops EVERY Friday night (along with the opposing group...). They begged us to come back every week they were having such a high time! I wish we could! We need to remember our troops and particularly our INJURED troops every day.

Following our fun at Walter Reed, we caught a cab (Hilariously, the SAME cab driver who dropped us off there - a PATRIOT if ever there was! He emigrated from Ethiopia, was educated in Russia, and was FURIOUS that this country, with an "outstanding constitution", had a government that was governing so outside the limits of that great document! He was listening to Mark Levin as he dropped us off!) and headed back downtown to meet the Tea Party Express bus!

The bus pulled in around 9:00 and we missed seeing it come in, but WHAT a crowd was STILL there when we got there! Apparently, they had just finished filming a Hannity promo and the crowd was fired up!

Lots of great pictures to post once we get home!! Yes, I am STILL kicking myself at forgetting my camera's cable - especially since Carma Neta and I got a great little interview with Mark Williams (Chairman of the Our Country Deserves Better PAC)

Tomorrow should be AMAZING! Stay tuned!!!

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Wooohoooo! David and I are in D.C.!!!!

Here's the greatest part! EVERYWHERE we've gone, be it the airport or the train station or on the street, we are seeing PATRIOTS!!! You just can't imagine how incredible that has been!

I think we both kind of thought that we wouldn't see anyone until the rally Saturday, but NOOOOOO!

We took the Amtrak Mark from the Baltimore airport into DC and low and behold, as we get down to the platform, it is FULL of people who have come to march in the morning!

We met several couples from Missippi, a BUNCH from Texas, a guy from Louisiana who just called up his Airforce buddy from Georgia to go with him when he heard about it on FOX (after changing over from CNN!) and they both came together, a couple and their teenaged daughter from Oregon...it's just been amazing!

Everyone somehow seems to gravitate to one another and then the talk begins! Everyone we have talked to is sick of the SAME thing! The Big Government machine eating up the Constitution and spitting it out at us in shreds!!! There's no talk of Democrat or Republican, just the fact that the government is out of control and no one is listening to WE THE PEOPLE!

It's like Old Home Week in Washington, D.C. Dave and I have every hope that we'll be walking shoulder to shoulder with THOUSANDS of people tomorrow morning!

One guy sitting across from us on the train was talking about the fact that when he heard about the rally, he just threw some stuff in a suitcase, booked some tickets and headed out! He thought he might be the only guy here and he was SHOCKED to find so many like-minded people on the train platform with him!

I got some great footage of one guy from Louisiana talking about how for years he just voted and didn't pay much attention to what was going on - even after Obama was elected. What caused him to pick up and take off for D.C. WITHOUT EVEN A SUITCASE, was the fact that he heard legislators and people in the media calling those patriots attending TEA Parties and Town Halls, racists, angry mobs, Astroturfers and tea baggers. He said, "...that was the straw that broke the camels back! That's just plain wrong and I couldn't be silent ANY MORE!

Stay tuned! I will be blogging more after the rally tomorrow and hopefully, I'll have a cable to download some photos!!!

WE WILL TAKE THIS COUNTRY BACK!