Politics { Al Franken stumps in Rochester
Al Franken stopped in Rochester. Al is running for U.S. Senate, the seat currently held by Norm Coleman. I was initially going to miss it, but decided to go. I was not sure if I was going to throw my support behind him, since its still 21 months until the election. But I found the rally to be good. There were a lot of people there, a lot more than I thought there would be, but I need to change my perspective. Rochester is no longer the conservative bulwark of Minnesota that has moved to the north Metro.
He was very personable I felt and worked the crowd. He liked to mingle and meet with people.
(sorry the quality is poor, all I had on me was my cell phone)
The theme of his stump speech was 'Leadership'. Something I agree with, and it was mainly that we need new leadership, that our currently leadership has failed (and made things worse).
His main points were:
*Leadership; we need stronger leadership, especially in the Senate
*Universal Healthcare; access for all, the Republicans said it was easy, why didn't they do it?
*Support of education (especially higher education); increasing support in programs that allow more people to go to college (i.e. Pell Grant)
*War contract oversight; Coleman is on the permanent committee overseeing war contracts to investigate fleecing, corruption, mis-use, etc. and he is doing a poor job at it
*Getting rid of the Bush tax cuts for the very rich
*Support of the troops, and the partitioning of Iraq; I wish I could remember the name of the plan, but my memory fails me
*Rebuilding our credibility and place with the rest of the world; after it was squandered post-9/11
*No privatization of Social Security; keep private firms out of it
*Stop the gutting and attacking of labor by the government; help and support labor
*Stop the gutting/elimination of Veteran's benefits (and research to help them with such things as injuries such as Traumatic Brain Injury)
When his time was up, he decided to have a question and answer session, and we the audience, while not being pre-screened (all were welcome), did not really have any tough questions for him (I'm not sure why, usually Minnesotans, especially liberals always drop the tough questions, and don't hesitate to do so). The best question that was asked to Franken was really more of a request, and that was to keep "Coleman's feet to the fire."
He told some anecdotes about his life in Minnesota growing up and that of his wife's and how her family, due to many hardships, still were able to overcome, thanks to support structures like Social Security survivor's benefits. I've heard these before in his books, but it was nice to see and meet his wife in person and put a face to the words.
Overall I enjoyed the rally, I enjoyed seeing fellow liberals turn out. I enjoyed meeting and seeing Al in person (after years of just seeing him on the TV and hearing him on Air America).
He was passionate and I feel sincere.
2 comments:
I wish I'd known about the rally. I think Al Franken has a lot going for him and I'm interested to learn more.
He's come a long way from his days on Saturday Night Live! "It's me. Al Franken." or "This will be the decade of me. Al Franken."
It didn't have much lead time. On Monday he had only officially been in the race six days. We knew about relatively last minute. Which given that, the turn out was amazing. I guess not as large as in Duluth, but for someplace that used to be a Republican stronghold, not too shabby. People were honking as they drove by (in support not, I didn't see any middle fingers or hear any rude comments).
It was also fitting that the rally was moved from the Dos Amigos restaurant to the Union Labor Temple (because so many people showed up). There is an issue in town, and sadly since I don't read the local paper (and dobut it would have much about this anyways since this town is anti-union), where the Holiday Inn was purchased by another company who then fired 19 union workers, some of whom had been there for years.
The 10pm news made barely a mention, even though he was interviewed for 10 minutes.
Rochester still has a long way to go in my opinion but support for liberal candidates and more union demonstrations are helping move in the right direction.
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