The local version of Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity (and Stephen Colbert’s March to Keep Fear Alive) is taking shape.
Event organizer Roger Haak announced yesterday that 11-year-old LGBT activist Will Phillips, NWA Center for Equality board member (and former Flyer contributor) Jon Cox, and political activist and immigration rights proponent Stephen Coger will join him as speakers for the event, scheduled for 5-9 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 29 at Wilson Park.
Update: Jon Williams of 93.3 the Eagle informed us this morning (10/28) that he will also be speaking at the event.
For those who aren’t familiar, Stewart announced the rally on his TV show in September. The idea is to host a non-partisan gathering for the “70 or 80 percenters” in America who, as Stewart put it, don’t have the time, or the “theatrical flair necessary for today’s 24-hour a day, 7-days-a-week news media.”
From the website:
Ours is a rally for the people who’ve been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs) — not so much the Silent Majority as the Busy Majority. If we had to sum up the political view of our participants in a single sentence… we couldn’t. That’s sort of the point.
Afterwards, a local version of Stephen Colbert’s “March to Keep Fear Alive” will make its way down the trail from Wilson Park to Dickson Street.
More than 300 people have RSVP’d via the Facebook event Haak created to promote the Fayetteville version of the rally, and Haak said that he expects a big crowd Friday night.
