Early Voting in Miami

Barack and Michelle Obama held a rally on Tuesday at downtown Miami's Bicentennial Park, but on Monday, the first day to vote early in Florida, there was a flurry of homegrown activism and demonstrations to G.O.T.V., or get-out-the-vote.

See photos from the event here.

The day began with a rally at the International Longshoreman’s Association – AFL-CIO, in Overtown, where members from the nation’s largest labor unions took the stage (SEIU, ILA, AFSCME, and the Teamsters, to name a few). Before the high-profile speakers took the stage, Sam Cooke’s civil-rights era “A Change Is Gonna Come,” set the mood of a movement, not just a campaign.

Rev. Samuel Sullivan referenced the biblical march to Zion. “But we are not marching to Jerusalem,” he said, “We are marching to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

The rally then took on the form of a march and headed south on NW 2nd Ave, towards Government Center, a site for early voting in Miami-Dade County.

On the other, eastern end of downtown, around a hundred students and local organizations gathered in the courtyard of Miami-Dade College’s Wolfson campus. A metal band, whose angsty sound didn’t appropriately capture the jubilant mood, performed live from a stage, and a street band with horns and drums followed the march to its conclusion, also at Government Center.

A podium and microphone, powered by a car-battery, was used by the labor unions, student groups, and other local community groups, to address the crowd.

There was even a mariachi band hired for the occasion.

The event was to be nonpartisan. However, one outspoken McCain supporter (who held a campaign poster high into the air, attached to a large stick), shouted at the labor unions and students, “Communista! Terrorista!” She went mostly unnoticed.

So all of this to say, instead of early voting being quick and easy, there was a large line of excited voters for most of the day, looking more like a party than anything neat and orderly.