We turned our disappointment about the Special Election into ACTION. Craig turned his car trailer into a structure for a float. This took him several days of planning and constructing. It was designed to have a red, white and blue table skirt surrounding the wooden frame and a LED American Flag for the front but the skirt and flag were delayed. So we ended up using wrapping paper for the skirt and suspending a real American flag with fishing line from the frame – with spotlights.
Friday we had a gathering of people at the garden so see the basic structure and talk through the plan for construction on Saturday. Many contributed to wrapping of presents and we came up with the present tags including coal for billionaires. We started building the float at 1045 yesterday morning and stopped at 445 when we had to check in. It was chilly and overcast but a dedicated group of a dozen people worked together and got it done. There were 95 entries in the parade. Ours was one of the best and certainly much better than the one from the Republican Party.
Our reception along the parade route (less than a mile) was mostly positive to enthusiastic. A fair amount of glares, a couple of thumbs down, but no verbal taunts. While we shifted 7 points to left in Robertson County, there is still a lot of hesitancy paricularly by the long-standing residents to identify themselves as not supporting the GOP even if they do not support the direction they are taking this country. Most of our most active members are transplants or natives who lived elsewhere for many years and came back.
We accomplished our goal of being proudly present in our community. We are here to stay.
Tamara Unleashed 