HillBuzz

Yesterday, Sunday 9/28/08, a group of DeMcCrats for McCain and Chicago Young Republicans got together to provide bipartisan visibility for John McCain at the Chicago Bears vs. Philadelphia Eagles game at Soldier Field. The plan was to walk through the publicly-owned parking lots during tailgating parties before the game to give people McCain window signs and stickers if they asked for them, and to let them know about the McCain events we have coming up in Chicago in the next 35 days.

Our group met up at the Field Museum, which is right across from Soldier Field, and as soon as we broke out our McCain signs and stickers, people came up to us and asked for some.  A family from Seattle, sitting on the stairs of the museum, called us over and not only asked for a sign and stickers, but also asked us to take their picture and tell everyone we could that not everyone in Washington state supports Obama. Per their request, here is this wonderful family from Seattle:

Mom, dad, the two kids — all McCain supporters.  And all of them are DEMOCRATS. This is what we keep telling all the Eeyores out there: don’t listen to the media, who are obviously in the tank for Obama and are doing everything possible to elect him. People on the ground do not support Obama the way the media claim they do — and no matter  how much the media pushes for Obama, the people on the ground resist him. This is happening in Chicago. It’s happening in Seattle. It’s happening ALL OVER. The media just isn’t reporting it, and great efforts are made by Obama supporters at all levels to depress enthusiasm for McCain and inhibit McCain visibility.

That’s just what happened to us on Sunday, when Monterrey Security, a private contractor hired by the Chicago Bears, repeatedly tried to keep McCain supporters from wearing McCain gear or supporting McCain at the Bears game, but DID NOT inhibit Obama supporters in any way. People were allowed to wear Obama tee shirts, buttons, etc. and walk freely into the parking lots and Bears game. People wearing McCain stickers, holding McCain signs, and wearing McCain shirts were stopped by Monterrey Security and told that no political items were allowed in the parking lot tailgating parties or inside the stadium. 

Obama supporters were not harrassed.

McCain supporters were told they were not allowed to have McCain shirts, stickers, signs, or other gear.

Monterrey Security enforced a policy at Soldier Field that applied only to supporters of John McCain.

Obama’s followers had free reign to do as they pleased.

The first incident we had at the game occurred in Soldier Field’s south parking lot (the one close to McCormack Place). The Monterrey Security guard stationed at the entrance we approached told us that the parking lot was private property and that the Chicago Bears prohibited any political canvassing or advertising in the parking lots during tailgating parties. We asked this guard where this policy was posted, and he said it wasn’t posted anywhere, but that it was a “known policy”. We asked him where we could obtain a copy of that policy, and he said he did not know, but maybe someone inside the stadium would know. We asked him how we could ask someone inside the stadium for a copy of that policy if we didn’t have tickets but were just there to tailgate — like a lot of people at a Bears game — and he said we would have to take all of this up with a supervisor and that he was just doing his job. We told him one of us was parked in this lot and that we wanted to go to the car and he said he would have to confiscate all of our McCain items before he would allow us into the lot. We asked him why, and he said it was just policy, that no political items would be allowed into the lot: no stickers, no signs, no buttons, no tee shirts. Nothing political was allowed in the lot — which in this case meant nothing with McCain on it. We could clearly see people with Obama tee shirts on inside the parking lot.

So, this policy applied only to supporters of John McCain.

We left this south lot in a search of a supervisor once this particular guard said he thought one of the Monterrey higher-ups would be at another lot. So, we attempted to enter a parking lot closer to the stadium and were stopped by another Monterrey employee, who had obviously been talking to someone on the radio because as soon as we walked towards this lot, the man said, “Oh, it’s you guys again.  They just told you McCain people you can’t be here, and here you are again. You can’t come in here with that stuff.” We explained to this man that our intent was not to approach anyone with anything McCain related — we just walk around and if anyone stops us and asks us for something, we would of course give it to them. Just walking from lot to lot, on public sidewalks, people stopped us repeatedly and asked us for McCain signs and stickers. We just wanted to walk up and down the tailgating lines — if people wanted what we had, we’d give it to them, but we’d never even ask them.  They would come to us.

Well, this guard got really animated and raised his voice at us, telling us he was in charge and we were not getting into the lot with anything McCain on us. No stickers. No tee shirts. No signs. No flyers. NOTHING. Someone in our group just happened to be an author of works on the First Amendment, and asked this guard how his directives here apply to civil rights guaranteed under the Constitution, which really set this man off, and he started yelling some more about the parking lot being under his control and he was not going to allow any McCain items in there.

 The guard’s yelling attracted a lot of attention — the men behind him in the photo above came out to us and asked for McCain stickers and signs, because they could clearly see Monterrey Security was taking a stance against McCain, and not allowing his supporters into the lot.

When these men tried to re-enter the parking lot with the McCain stickers we gave them, the guard tried to make them take the stickers off, or he would not allow them into the lot in which they were tailgating.  At that moment, a young woman with an Obama “Hope” tee shirt on walked right passed the guard and into the lot. We confronted the guard, pointed to the woman, and asked him why he allows an Obama supporter to wear her Obama shirt inside the parking lot, but won’t allow McCain items in there. The woman, startled, looked directly our way, with her Obama “Hope” shirt clearly visible, and the guard, looking directly at her, said, “I don’t see anyone. I just see you.” The woman disappeared into the crowd before we could get a photo of her, but the people listening in on all of this clearly saw her, and clearly knew what the guard was doing.  We spotted another Monterrey Security employee now on the public sidewalk, obviously called in to handle this situation, so we left the guard in the maroon shirt above and went over to talk to him.

That’s when things got even more interesting, because Monterrey Security couldn’t determine what land was public property and what land belonged to the city of Chicago, paid for by taxpayers. This new Monterrey employee we spoke to claimed all the parking lots at Soldier Field are private property, because they are leased by the city to the Chicago Bears, and are thus held in private hands. He also claimed that the sidewalks linking the parking lots were all private property too, because they were part of the land lease from the city to the Bears for Soldier Field. All of this is completely contrarian to what we were told by the Chicago Alderman whose district Soldier Field sits in — the Alderman says all of this land is public property. Additionally, while we were canvassing here, a group of protestors was picketing the Chicago Bears for union-related issues, and these protestors were allowed to walk freely along the same sidewalks we were told we could not be standing on wearing items supporting John McCain.

So, people could protest the Bears for union violations on land at Soldier Field on which we could not stand and silently support John McCain by simply wearing his campaign gear.

You are not allowed to stand on public land dedicated to SOLDIERS, at Soldier Field, if you are supporting a decorated veteran running for president.

But, if you are a nice looking young woman in an Obama “Hope” tee shirt, you can do anything you please. And she was not the only Obama supporter we saw tailgating.

It was only the McCain supporters Monterrey Security and, thus, the Chicago Bears had a problem with.

So, we ended up walking back to the area we originally met up at — the public sidewalk outside the Field Museum, across from Soldier Field. That’s where we encountered a City of Chicago employee directing traffic (pictured below), who stopped what she was doing to shout “Obama! Obama! Obama!” at us and waive her arm in the air the way Arsenio Hall used to, on his talk show, about a hundred years ago.

We asked the Chicago Police if there was any reason we weren’t allowed to be out there supporting McCain, and the police had no problem with us. It was all coming from Monterrey Security, and the police would not get involved with dealing with them. It was Monterrey Security that made the decision to allow Obama supporters to walk freely into the parking lots and stadium wearing Obama gear, but McCain supporters were harassed and prevented from wearing anything supporting McCain in those tailgating parties.

But, ironically enough, we ended up, after this runaround, at a position near the Field Museum were tens of thousands of people walked by en route to the stadium from the city’s transportation network:  we passed out our flyers and gave away hundreds of stickers, and a few posters to people willing to stuff them under their shirts to sneak them into the stadium if they couldn’t get them into their cars before the game. As people walked by, we had a lot of silent smiles, thumbs up, and other subtle gestures of support from McCain supporters in the crowd, especially from Eagles fans. We also had numerous people who came right up to us and thanked us for being out there, for giving visibility to John McCain, and for having the guts to support him in Chicago, of all places.

The Obama supporters who passed by were what you would expect: loud, screaming obscenities, saying vulgar things about Sarah Palin, mostly, and also saying vile things about McCain and his age. These are the very same people who call anyone not supporting Obama a racist, and yet they hurl the nastiest sexist and ageist slings at anyone supporting McCain. It’s unbelievable – and so very sophomoric and immature.

The funny thing is, whenever any Obama supporter would scream or yell anything nasty about McCain, a greater chorus of people around them would shout “Go McCain!” to drown these people out. For every one Obama thug in the crowd, there were a large number of McCain supporters who kept quiet until the moment they needed to speak up and fight back.

That’s just what’s going to happen on election day, folks.

Obama supporters are loud and bully anyone who doesn’t think like them. The media, and companies like Monterrey Security, try to drown out all resistance to Obama and prevent McCain’s supporters from having the visibilty and respect McCain deserves.

But, we can’t ever give up.  We can’t ever go home just because Monterrey’s guards try to stop us — keep looking for another place to do visibility. Keep emailing, blogging, canvassing, and phone banking to get the message out that people support John McCain and want him to be our next president. And this includes a large number of lifelong Democrats like us.

And on Election Day, when the media and Monterrey Security can’t go into that voting booth with you, pull that lever for John McCain and show all of these people that no matter how much they tried to force Obama on us, thinking people everywhere refused to drink the Kool-Aid, or crumble in the face of their organized bullying.