Lakeland Local

Today's Rally in Links & Pics

Posted by Chuck Welch on April 21, 2008 5:49 PM | Permalink   | Comments (3)

If you missed today's rally against the CSX project, I'm sure you caught it on one of the news stations, in the Ledger*, Tribune, or Sentinel. Better still you read about it at Tales from the Delk Side or on YLakeland.

I did a quick head count of about 250 and I am sure there were more as people moved in and out. The Sentinel reporter counted about 200 a little later. Don't let anyone believe that was a small number. A last minute rally without a celebrity, held on a Monday, during lunch, isn't going to attract Martin Luther King numbers. The Downtown Lakeland Partnership had a very healthy showing.

I thought telling was the fact CSX held up trains away from the rally so no stations could get video of the trains traveling past the speaker's podium. You have to give them credit for hiring smart public relations people. Maybe PR people are filling the 8500 200 less than 150 jobs CSX used to claim we'd get for the project?

The photo I had on during the rally was a quick cameraphone shot. Here are a few others:

* - The Ledger didn't bother to write up the rally in their breaking news. I guess it wasn't as locally important as "U.S. Tourist Killed After Plunging Off Cliff In Bolivia"