One Care Rally – Manhattan Beach CA – January 7,
2007
Manhattan Beach is a small but busy beach town just south of
Los Angeles International Airport. We choose to take advantage
of the foot traffic on the walkway by the beach front at the entrance
to the pier. Mother Nature gave us a perfect day, with temperatures
in the 70’s, blue skies and gently breezes. The community
support for this effort was terrific. We had 26 people participating
in the rally, which ran from 11 am to 1 pm. We also had (through
the generous support of the local League of Women Voters) a female
clown who was a balloon artist. With more that a dozen signs and
two dozen green and white balloons, we were ready to greet the
walkers and bikers who were plentiful. We collected over a hundred
signatures for the petition to the Governor and found a generally
favorable response to the issue.
Our group was a diverse group made up members from the League
of Women Voters, the HCA group, AAUW, and several Political Parties.
The mood was festive as balloons waved in the breeze and the clown
“Silly Sally” made all sorts of balloon items to entrance
the children and their families. We had a large area to spread
out into and dispersed ourselves through the Sunday throng. We
passed out flyers and engaged people in conversations of health
care in our State and Country. Surprisingly we found very little
opposition, and most of the opposition was in the nature of pessimism
that this broken system could ever be fixed.
