Rally for Reform Wrap-up

The Facts not Fear Rally for Reform was a huge success in my book. Let's look at some of the highlights shall we. In no particular order.

• People came to the rally, about 60 people showed up, woo!


• Mary Jo Killroy showed up and spoke a bit


• No one passed out during the 5 mile march


• People were friendly, upbeat, fired up, and ready to rock


• No one was arrested, even though the police kicked us out of OSU Medical Center

Thanks to everyone who came out, you guys made the rally. This was an unprecedented success in my book. But it is only the first chapter for Facts not Fear, there is still so much work to be done to get meaningful healthcare reform passed.

So what's next? Well a few things, we will be emailing and collecting up information and contacting progressive groups around Central Ohio about setting up more rallies. Furthermore we will be contacting OSU to see if their order to disperse was lawful, and if we find that we were censored unlawfully, we will be contacting the media and we will head back to OSU to have our voices heard.

But at this point we are just regrouping, cooling down from 2 weeks of emailing, posting, sign making, flyer making, handshaking, liberal activism. My cofounder, Josh Link, and I will be traveling with some progressives to Washington DC this weekend for the national Healthcare Rally.

If you would like to come along on the roadtrip, drop us a line at factsnotfear@gmail.com

Organizing For America Rally

Tonight I had the extreme pleasure of seeing Senator Sherrod Brown, Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy, Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, Lt Governor Lee Fisher, Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman, and many others at the Let's Get It Done: Health Insurance Reform Now Event. It was a tremendously exciting and energizing event. The speakers were all excellent, there were hundreds of pro-reformers there, and me and Link were able to hand out 200 Facts not Fear Rally fliers.

This fight is going to be won this September, irrational anger and fear tactics are getting old and starting to fall on deaf ears. Tonight there were hundreds of Central Ohio citizens cheering for healthcare reform, there was a handful of deathers announcing their Tea Parties and peddling their misinformation. Sherrod Brown artfully pointed out that there were only 14 or 15 people trying to disrupt the meeting, after the first 20 minutes, there few and far between cries of "higher taxes", "death panels", and "where's the beef?" were put down completely as they knew that they had come up against their most feared enemy, energized, well informed, organized liberals.

After that the only cheers that interrupted our leaders were "Healthcare NOW!" and "Everybody IN, Nobody OUT"

It was an amazing event, I scored a sweet sign, we informed 190 liberals, and I think about 10 deathers about the Facts not Fear rally, and we had our voices heard.

We are now fired up and ready to go for this Labor Day, the Facts not Fear Rally for Reform is primed and ready to go, we have the POWERHORN (our amazing new bullhorn), and we are now in talks with Organizing for America, Workers United, and the Columbus College Democrats.

Want to join in the fun, send an email to factsnotfear[at]gmail[dot]com or leave a comment.