Last Monday I stepped out of the locker room of the university recreation center and saw four men in black suits staring up at the rafters. I then went to leave the building, and there were four more suited men checking out the exits. My first thought was that I could not remember the last time I’d seen even one person at the rec center wearing a suit, and now there were eight. My second thought was that these guys were either Men in Black looking for aliens or Secret Service agents prepping for a visit from either Harris or Trump.
When I got home I checked Kamala Harris’ schedule and found out that she was going to be in La Crosse on Thursday. The exact location of the rally was undisclosed, but apparently I’d stumbled across some inside information.
Harris’s website had a link for registering for the rally. I’ve seen Presidents (Clinton, Obama) and Presidential candidates (Mondale, Gore) in person, so I knew that attending the rally would entail a long wait. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to use the better part of a day to hear a stump speech, but Manyu wanted to go. I registered both of us, although I had to sign us up as individuals and not as a group of two.
When I finished the online form, I was told that registration did not guarantee admission. If I was admitted, I’d receive an email Thursday morning explaining where to go and what to do. About 8am on Thursday I received an admission letter. Manyu did not. At 9am, Manyu got a phone call from the Wisconsin Democrats saying that they were short a few volunteers for the rally and she could still attend if she was willing to work at it. She declined, realizing she’d been avoiding large groups ever since COVID and probably shouldn’t have registered in the first place. I’d recently recovered from a bout with COVID and felt largely immune.
My instructions were to bring a photo ID and go to Tent B sometime between noon and 2pm. I bicycled to the Rec Center and went to the end of a line that was around the block and down the street. After five minutes, a volunteer came by and shouted that anyone in Groups A, B, or C should step out of line and go directly to their respective tents. I left, found Tent B, and discovered only five people in front of me. A volunteer put a green band around my wrist, and two minutes later I was in the building.
Once inside, various volunteers saw my wrist band and told me to keep walking. After making a big loop around the main crowd, I wound up on the bleachers directly behind the podium. All of the attendees had a three hour wait ahead of them, and I was one of very few people who didn’t have to stand the whole time. I asked those sitting around me if they knew what we’d done to merit a prime location, but no one knew.
While I waited, I had plenty of time to assess the crowd and the stage. The crowd was predominantly white. Most of them were either college students or senior citizens. Middle-aged people, i.e., those with jobs and/or young children, must have had other places to be in the middle of the day. There were a half dozen people on the stage. Three were Secret Service, and three were campaign staff. The broad-shouldered Secret Service agents wore stereotypical scowls and barely moved. The campaign workers were much slighter in build and darted onstage/offstage like nervous squirrels. The campaign workers took their duties as seriously as the Secret Service people, but as far as I could tell, were accomplishing nothing at all. Between the three of them, the height of the microphones at the podium got checked at least eight times.
The speakers, in order of appearance, were the La Crosse mayor, a UW-La Crosse student, Mark Cuban, another student, and Harris herself. Of the five, I was most moved by the second student. He nervously said that his mom was an immigrant who worked two jobs to support her family, he was the first person in his family to go to college, and now he was about to introduce the Vice President of the United States.
Harris herself was fine. Except for a jab at Trump’s recent comment that January 6 was “a day of love,” she didn’t say anything I hadn’t heard before. The two surprises were 1) she looked fresh and seemed to genuinely enjoy campaigning, and 2) while I left the venue before Harris was finished working the crowd after her speech, I had the impression she was going to stay to shake the hands of everyone who wanted to personally meet her.
I am glad I saw Harris, but I now realize that I am not good rally material. I don’t like Trump, but didn’t feel compelled to boo every time his name was mentioned. I clapped whenever Harris said something I agreed with, but because I was situated directly behind her, I think I was supposed to hold up and frantically shake the “Harris Walz” placard that one of the volunteers had given me. I am pretty sure that one of the times I did hold up the sign I had it upside down.
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