2003-04-07 - 9:55 a.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "God Bless America"

Earlier last week, at the gas station, I saw a small poster for a "Support the Troops" rally in South Philadelphia. I made a note of the time and location, confirmed it in the paper Saturday morning, and off we went.

The rally was in a primarily blue-collar neighborhood in South Philly. Where I live, closer to Center City, is mainly liberal white-collar folks and art students, so up 'til this point I'd been wearily putting up with anti-war this, anti-Bush that. Walking down into this neighborhood was a something of a shock. Pleasant, but still a shock. I saw this:

And this:

And walking down the street near us, also on their way to the rally, these guys:

Honestly, I would have to estimate that at least 75% of the houses on any given street had a yellow ribbon and/or American flag prominently displayed. It was astonishing to me. When we got back home, I realized that NONE of the houses in my neighborhood have any flags. There is a yellow ribbon here and there, and sometimes a flag sticker in a window -- rarely more than one per block -- and that was it.

So, we turned a corner, and there was the rally:

All these photos were taken by a very short person, so I didn't get the kinds of views of the crowd that I might have liked. Poindexter and I thought there were a few hundred people there, but the local paper estimates that there were about a thousand. I'll go with that. :)

The rally was held at the Second Street Irish Society, which had draped an enormous flag over the front of the building:

Quite a few people were wearing those blue "We Support Our Troops" t-shirts, and almost everyone had at least a small flag. Two guys carrying a fistful of the little flags handed us a couple, so we could wave ours.

A number of military folks were there, along with some military vehicles:

Some of the loudest cheers were when they announced to us who those people were. Also loudly cheered was a man whose son is in Iraq right now, especially when he announced that his son's unit had taken over a western airport in Iraq "in forty five minutes!"

There was a speaker from Holland, who introduced himself by saying "I'm from Europe, but I'm not French," which got some laughs and hollers from the crowd. He didn't have a prepared speech, but he spoke about how he came from a country that was liberated by Americans, and parents told him stories about what it was like to be occupied by Germans, which is part of why he believes in what we're doing in Iraq.

Another woman spoke of how important it was for the troops to know that they had our support, and her hopes that we would continue to support them and to give them a hero's welcome when they return. More cheering and hollering.

A veteran came out and spoke about a recent anti-war protest, wherein he and some of his fellow veterans turned out to "protect the war memorial" from the protesters. He referred to the protesters as "hippies" and then said, "Well, I don't know if you call them hippies anymore, but I do know they need a bath."

Near the end, a guy with a guitar came out to sing. He looked like a typical musician hippie type, except that he had his hair in an American-flag bandana with a little hand-flag sticking out of it:

He sang a bizarre combination of "Dixie" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" (OK, I get the symbolism), and then "America the Beautiful", and much to my annoyance, he sang everything to his own beat rather than how it was originally written, so that no one could sing along (although they did try). Instead of "Oh, byoo-oo-ti-ful for spa-a-cious skies," he sang, "Oh bytfull--ll-ll foo-oo-oor spcyskies", where he'd cram syllables. I absolutely hate this sort of thing and spent the entire time trying not to laugh at him. But. He had flags in his hippie hair. I'll give him a brownie point or two for that.

There was a young Irish guy running the show, who introduced everyone and made a few remarks of his own. He said that the soldiers know this war wasn't about oil, it was about liberation and the protection of their country. That we were bringing the Iraqi people the freedom we love and enjoy.

At the end, they played a recording of "God Bless America" and everyone sang along. This particular veteran sang quite proudly, and even danced around and waved his crutches in the air occasionally for emphasis:

Here's a photo of the people as the rally was breaking up:

Visible in the photo is a woman with an khaki-colored hat. She was dressed in a creative camouflage outfit that included a camo miniskirt and heavy military-style boots. She was a trip.

It felt good to be there. Although my online blog reading is almost exclusively "pro-war", I am still surrounded by a lot of anti-war, anti-America, anti-Bush individuals locally and it just gets tiresome. It's always the people who are dissatisfied who make the most noise, so it was good to hear, for a change, from the people who believe in what we're doing over there.

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