Kerry in Portland

Just got back from the John Kerry rally.

I'm guessing at least 40,000 people, maybe more. Everywhere I looked, people wanting to see him, people clapping, cops looking bored. There were a few crazy conservatives looking for a fight, but we mostly ignored them.

Photos from my futurephone

DailyKos thread with some really nice photos

Amazing stuff.

Update: Looks like the offical count is 50,000 at the rally. 25K in the main crowd, another 25K surrounding.

Go check out the DailyKos thread. Lots of photos, though I'm not sure they capture what it was like to be there. This wasn't a hand-picked crowd. This was a great cross-section of America. I saw old couples, young couples, small families, black, white, Asian, straight, gay: all of us Americans. People had their kids, their dogs, American flags, cellphones. The cops were there, armed for some sort of insurrection that never happened. They mostly looked really hot in their Robocop outfits. (The bike patrols got the better deal, they got to wear shorts.)

Saw a couple of friends on my way back to work, which is weird since it was a big, big crowd. Talked with total strangers about the crowd and how sad we were that we didn't have any signs from the rally--we don't have physical proof we were there.

There is one group of people that didn't get counted--the people on Naito Parkway rolling their windows down to listen to the speech and honk their horns. I saw that quite a bit, as well as people driving by after the rally, screaming "Go Kerry!"

The trip back to work was also somewhat amusing--a mass of people with Help is on the Way and Veterans for Kerry signs got on. As the bus pulled into traffic, the driver got on the microphone, "As good lefties, you should all be ashamed since not one of you had a bus pass." In their defense, a lot of them said they were from out of town. But still, heckling from the busdriver. :)