Tying Up Loose Ends From July 4th

I said in my last posting that I regretted that I didn't have a picture of Cynthia Van Auken, Kasey Cowen, and Nancy Henry. Matt Miller was kind enough to pass on these photos. Sorry Nancy, but I still don't have a picture of you!
Here's Cynthia, our fearless leader. If it hadn't been for her efforts organizing the original tea party rally on April 15th, we wouldn't be where we are today. Ed Vallerga said to me in an email yesterday that for those of us that were at the first organizing meeting on May 5th, it is highly evident the growth and strides that our fledging group have made since that day and he is right. Only those who have been there from the very beginning can truly appreciate how far we have come and it all began with Cynthia. Cynthia is a veteran to the world of politics. Before moving to Chico to be close to her children she was a politically active resident of Atlanta, Georgia. She ran for congress against Cynthia McKinney, who by the way is sitting in an Israeli prison right now. She was arrested for running an Israeli naval blockade. The ship she was in was providing supplies to the Palestinians. Forgive me for that ADHD movement. What I'm trying to say is that Cynthia is experienced in the ways of the political world and it is helpful to have that kind of resource available to a developing group.

Kasey Cowan is in the white shorts and dark head visor. She is talking with Dan Logue, our State Assemblyman. Just to remind you, she was the one to work on logo development, t-shirts (which turned out to be a major source of fund-raising), and setting up our website.

Matt took this picture at the Elk's lodge parking lot prior to our cruise. He was able to capture more of the numbers assembled, but it is still an incomplete representation of our numbers for the cruise.

At the end of the day, Matt was able to finally take a picture of our booth. Ed Vallerga and Jim Fiack worked the booth to the very end.

But, remember, this is what our booth area looked like for the entire day!

Even though press coverage was practically non-existent, one intrepid reporter from the Chico Enterprise Record (our local paper) wrote the following article. I was impressed because she actually reported the events of the day as they actually happened without editorializing or trying to minimize or disparage our efforts. I believe that Stacey Kennelly, the author, of this article was a former student of mine. I sent her an email thanking her for actually being a journalist. Here's the link to the article: http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_12756138