Someone e-mailed pictures to me of a anti-Sarah Palin rally held in Anchorage on Sept. 13, the same day others in Anchorage held a Welcome Back Sarah Rally. Evidently, there were more at the anti-Sarah rally than the other. Then I found this interesting blog at laurainak.blogspot.com that has some interesting insights from a woman living and working in Alaska and more on the rally.
“The ‘Alaska Women Reject Palin’ rally was held in the lawn of a downtown Anchorage library, shortly after Palin gave a speech in an Anchorage convention center. Hundreds of people participated in the rally, dwarfing a ‘Welcome Home Palin’ rally held the same day and reportedly making it the biggest protest rally in Alaska state history.
The rally was planned over coffee by a small group of women who initially thought that as few as ten people would show up. (They were happily surprised at the turnout — more than 1400 people attended, not including 90 counter demonstrators.) Attendees carried signs such as ‘’The Alaska Disasta,’’ ‘’Real Women Vote On The Issues, Not The Gender’’ ‘’Pro Woman, Anti-Palin,’’ and ‘’What About Healthcare?’’”
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2008.
IPH – You’ll probably have to ask her mother who drove her to the rally that morning. But I understand that Palin cut funding for special education in Alask more than 30 percent. Knowing that, the little girl’s sign makes complete sense.
According to a reliable source — Education Week — Palin did not cut that money at all. It just looked tricky because the budget had drastically different numbers indicating a cut due to budget line items for Special Ed programs changing and splitting. Source: Education Week.
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I’m sorry but I’m going to have to hold steady with my questioning of the sign’s statement. However the sign totally intrigues me. Any additional thoughts on what the sign is about?
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Also, what are your thoughts on lowering the cost of medicine with additional regulation? (It’s a tricky anti-free market stance I hold considering I call myself a quasi-Libertarian — which with the territory advocates giving the free market and capitalism almost carte blanche. I suppose I like the LP because they advocate for full personal freedom, although that goes hand-in-hand with full corporate freedom, which in itself is bad.)
Hey IPH… The Education Week article is interesting… that liberal media… what will we do with them. What’s interesting right now is all the big blogs, like Daily Kos and a few minor ones like mom political types, slammed her about the special education funding only to get shot down by comments that showed the issue began by misreading the Alaska state budgets.
But, as I’ve been pretty honest on this blog that I have a special needs son with asperger’s/high functioning autism (whatever we want to call it today), I did some digging around on some of the stuff I get from special needs/parent support listservs. Here is an article from the New York Times that talks about Palins record or really non-record on supporting special needs programs. Unfortunately, it doesn’t necessarily help us slam her even more – although it has some good stuff, but really highlights the ongoing problems we have every where, even here in Tucson re: proper funding, proper staffing, proper staff education, legal IEPs and schools breaking the laws daily re: meeting the educational needs of special needs kids (I hear about it all the time).
Luckily I’m involved with a local group of parents that are tired and want to organize a bit better to try and change things. I just hope we don’t burn out realizing that we may never be able to change things.
Take care IPH.
Link to NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/us/politics/07needs.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&sq=special-needs%20children&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=1&adxnnlx=1222878415-JpBKmpxMJAaLkdL3HsF7Jw