On the 28th of August, 2008, the Democratic party nominated U.S. Senator Barack Hussein Obama to be their endorsed candidate for President of the United States of America. The 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream..." speech on the mall in Washington D.C. now marks Denver, Colorado as another key site in the long march for racial equality in the U.S. - Senator Obama is bi-racial: his mother was a caucasian woman from Kansas, and his father an African from Kenya
It was a bright, warm, sunny afternoon in Denver. The line for admission streched for miles as excited attendees including the 6,000 conference delegates made their way into Invesco Field, the home of the Denver Broncos, to watch the last day of the Democratic Nominating Convention, culminating in Obama's acceptance speech.
First, some volunteers:
And no story about August 28th would be complete without comments from delegates. Two Minnesota Delegates took the time to comment on the goings-on, Mira Vats-Fournier of Faribault...
...and Minneapolis Mayor Raymond "R.T." Rybak, an early advocate of the draft-Obama movement, and the first big-city Mayor to announce his endorsement for Barack Obama's improbable candidacy.
Ok. I'm back from Denver and Invesco Field and a great tour and also meetup and walkthrough with Oreo of the great blog DemConWatchBlog.com Lots of news to report, which I will do in a separate blog.
But some teasing.
I learned that the total convention schedule is not finalized and that the media's premature in what it's reporting -- not that the Hillary Clinton speak date is wrong -- there's more to come.
Invesco Field itself is a huge and well-equipped facility that makes me wish Oakland would wake up and rebuild the Oakland / Alameda County Coliseum. It has miles of storage space, wide cooridors, and a new smell -- still.
I also learned that protest groups have filed suit to be closer to the convention than they are. But as you will see in my upcoming video from my trip, they're pretty close already!!
I also discovered that the best Spinach Salad's at Brooklyn's bar and grill next to Pepsi Center, and that the facility will become "The Politics Grill" by CNN. And while the link is informative on this matter, it does not do it justice as a video would. I even discovered folks working on turning it into the "CNN Grill."
This is but one of many images I have from the DNC Convention Media Walkthrough in Denver. This one directly from my iPhone. It is at Pepsi Center, which is where the convention will be held August 23 - 28.
The big news was the move of Senator Obama's acceptance speech to Invesco Field next door.
