Operation: Can you hear us now?

I briefly attended a healthcare protest in Indianapolis yesterday that appeared to have about fifty attendees.  Ironically, I had missed the email notice about this rally and had actually gone downtown to attend and report on a peace rally that was taking place.  As I was driving back to Carmel to attend the Dan Burton town hall meeting, I saw several women walking along Meridian St with protest signs tucked under their arms.

I followed them to the the protest which was taking place along Meridian St and out in front of a local television station.  While I'm still learning the basics, it appeared to be a well-organized and well-attended operation - especially considering that it was orchestrated by the Tea Party folks and not by the GOP machine or the special interest groups.

They were protesting the biased media coverage of the healthcare issue and probably had a point, given that even their rather large protest right outside of the television studio went unreported.  Tellingly, a much smaller group had gathered outside of Evan Bayh's office to accuse him of selling out on healthcare reform for failing to fall in line with the liberal agenda - and received a nice news story: Bayh's motive on healthcare questioned.

From a tactical standpoint, the main problem I saw is that the event failed to create its own media.  Portable cameras are cheap, websites are cheaper, and youtube accounts are free.  We can't expect to use guilt or shame to cause our opponents in the media to offer us exposure.  We have to take a pro-active stance.  We have to foster our own independent media and work to assure that the time and effort of the volunteers who came out and protested for hours is leveraged to the fullest possible extent.