The second largest city in the United States played host on Saturday to the second largest ‘One Nation Coming Together' rally. Attendance at the event was buoyed by the well publicized presence of leftist actor Danny Glover and Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Covering the event for Firedoglake , David Dayen estimated the crowd which gathered at L.A. City College at around 1,500. Parking does not seem to have been a problem.

Dayen reports that the "labor-heavy crowd" included representatives from the SEIU, AFSCME, UAW and numerous other unions. Also in attendance were representatives of Organizing for America, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (an ACORN spin-off) and members of the Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsome campaigns.

Among the issues highlighted at the rally were jobs, foreclosures, immigration reform and gay rights. A UCLA student and Latino Equality Alliance member named Diego proudly proclaimed "I'm 23, undocumented, queer and unafraid," he asked "Can our country risk losing students like me?" The short answer would be an emphatic YES!

In direct contrast to Glenn Beck's non-political ‘Restoring Honor Rally,' this event was all about partisan politics as evidenced by the many signs featuring such nonsensical slogans as "Recall Reagan's tax cuts" and (David Dayen's personal favorite) "TEA: Tax Executives a Lot." After the rally the activists and community organizers had a training session and then spilled out into the streets to ‘get out the vote.'

As the event came to a close, Marxist agitator and actor Danny Glover told the delusional group that they should "continue to fight for the change we voted for in 2008."

Maybe it's just me, but for an event which was dubbed ‘One Nation Coming Together,' there seemed to be am awful lot of people representing a large number of separate groups, each one pushing their own agenda.

paboehmke@yahoo.com