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Good lobbying day in Illinois
Story here. Turnout estimated at 3,500 - 5,000.
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What other rallies drew more people to Springfield? Any?
There are plenty of rallies in Springfield, Illinois, but we couldn't find out how many exceeded this IGOLD.
The sponsoring groups, ISRA and IllinoisCarry.org handed out a little over 5100 information packets with registrations.
The 3500 figure is out of who-knows-where.
The parade certainly looked every bit of 5000 as well.
Most Chicago-area legislators found themselves mysteriously stuck in meetings that went inexplicably long and so were unable to meet with their constituents.
Also, the new governor let a crowd of women varying from 150-400 in the lobbying group stand in front of his office for well over an hour, declining to show himself even for a wave of the hand.
The House celebrated the coming of the IGOLDers by passing out of committee three separate anti-gun bills including one-a-month.
Meanwhile, the evening before, the Chicago-stacked Public Health committee voted to kill the first of this new wave of citizen-carry bills.
Certainly a fine reception from our representatives in the Prairie State capitol!
Back home in Chicago, the largest media organization, the Chicago Tribune, in its paper edition, had not one single word about the event.
Few "news" organizations even sent reporters to the capitol. The Chicago TV news coverage was little more than visiting a departing bus to the rally at the suburban Rosemont start point.
For contrast, the following Wednesday, anti-gun activist Fr. Michael Pfleger is taking some of the semi-professional protesters he frequently shares with Jesse Jackson to the capitol for an anti-gun crusade. Perhaps they'll be better served by our journalist community.
Well, here's the thing about the 5,000 number. I'd like to think that, too, but the only people who made that estimate were eyeballing either the crowd or the unused boxes of information packets. I'd be willing to bet that very few people made it into the legislative update session without a packet (I was handing them out at the door along with many others.) Almost all of the attendees without packets were people who arrived after the march began. There were certainly a lot of those (I met many of them) but it's hard to say how many.
I also cleaned up the unused packets and packed them back in their boxes, as well as putting away the unused boxes. Based on that, I'd say 3500 is a good estimate for the head count, 4000 at the most. The Secretary of State Police, who run the metal detectors and put every single visitor through that day, estimated that we sent about 3500 people through, so I feel comfortable with that. Is it a little conservative? Maybe.
Now, here's the part to remember: at 3500, you cannot name a bigger group lobbying in Springfield in recent memory. Even among those smaller groups, if you limit yourself to groups that get people to take a day off work and travel and eat at their own expense, the numbers dwindle to a select few very quickly. In the big picture, I don't really care about the difference between 5000 and 3500. 5000 is better than 3500 in the same way that 500 horsepower is more fun than 350 horsepower--500 sounds more impressive, but if everyone else is running on 100hp, 350 is almost an unfair advantage. We've gone from less than a hundred, to a couple hundred, to five hundred, to 800, to over 1000, to 2500 last year, to 3500 this year. We're growing by leaps and bounds. I just don't see any reason to worry too much about the exact number. Let them think they're minimizing us if they want, but a lobbying day with 3500 people who all paid their own way to be there kicks all their asses and they well know it.
and a story about the story is here.