The Rally Word: A CMCer's
Experience at the Oct. 30th
Rally to Restore Sanity

The Oct. 30th Rally to Restore Sanity, held on the National Mall in Washington D.C., attracted over 200,000 people, including students from CMC. India Wade '13 writes about her experience traveling cross-country to attend the event.
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Buying a $340 plane ticket just to sit on the roof of a porta-potty in D.C. for three hours, while watching TV host Jon Stewart on a screen performing two blocks away, is undoubtedly insane. But ironically, this is exactly what I, and 200,000 others, did in hopes of restoring sanity to our political culture. Which begs the questions: To what lowly, decrepit state has our political culture sunk? And how on earth did 200,000 people fit on top of one porta-potty? As absurd as it sounds, I think it workedat least for those three hours. The Oct. 30th Rally to Restore Sanity was not, nor do I think it was intended to be, a momentous alteration to American politics; it was simply a time for people to join together at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and share a coherent message: that both sides are getting a little too rowdy. As Stewart said, and as I think the very occurrence of the Rally (and even Glenn Beck's rally) demonstrates, "We live now in hard times, not end times." People are clearly bothered by the current economic and political climate. However, we are only disturbed enough to hold a few rallies and stand around with clever signs. We're not under such despotism that we are rising up in armed rebellion, nor has any state tried to succeed from the union.
Presumably, at least 200,000 people have enough disposable income to get to D.C., eliminating any fear of a proletariat revolution. And as the recent election shows, we may be discouraged and divided, but we still have some faith in the political system itself. At the very least, we'll still vote. Going to the Rally and seeing hundreds of thousands of happy, kind and reasonable people showed me this, and left me with much more optimism than I arrived with. (OK, so it also left me hungry, tired, and in dire need of a shower.)
This being said, the Rally also showed me a darker shade of reality: that three hours (give or take) is the maximum amount of time sanity can be restored. Yes, for three hours we sat/stood as one colossalbut reasonablecrowd, managing to file out of the National Mall in a fashion comparable only to a well-run fire drill. But fast forward 20 minutes and I was in a metro full of grumpy, middle-aged folks kicking "broken" ticket machines, while boisterous college students blocked escalators to throw on their costumes for a Pi Kappa Alpha Halloween extravaganza.
All in all, The Rally to Restore Sanity can only be described as a fun event, well worth my $340or, as I like to think of it, the majority of my bank account. Stewart provided a germane and entertaining balance of comedic routines, celebrity appearances, and rhetoric. And participants were mostly kind, generous, and reasonable (I'm excluding, here, this one lady who pulled a chunk of my hair out while trying to get in front of me). Oh, and a special thanks to Whitney Dawson '12 for the best-ever tour of the Capitol Building. India Wade '13

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