Opinion
Michelle Obama visits the Twin Cities for Grassroots Rally, student observes
October 31, 2014
On October 21 a few of our UW-River Falls students were fortunate enough to travel to the Twin Cities for an event called the “Grassroots Rally.”
Within the first hour there were 750 people lined up down the block outside of Patrick Henry High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Most them were there anticipating the arrival of the first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama. Other guest speakers in attendance were Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton and Senator Al Franken.
I was also in attendance, and fortunately I got a ticket in the front row. I took notes during the whole event and describe the experience as being surreal. Seeing Obama was like seeing a movie star.
Her arrival was very low-key, but the secret servicemen were still extremely serious and alert while on the job. Some of the Secret Service men arrived in U-Haul vans and there were also cops doing laps with their dogs sniffing the whole building out.
When entering the building, observers were made to go through airport like security clearance.
During Obama’s speech, she made a couple of jokes about her husband, President Barack Obama, and then touched on the importance of voting participation by young people. She felt that the biggest problem isn’t that young people don’t care, but that a lot of time people are busy and don’t have the time.
She is currently working on finding alternative ways to get students to vote. It was a great event to experience and I liked representing the Falcons.
Latisha Townsend is a journalism student from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. In her free time she loves to blog, read, and do arts and crafts. She also boxes while back home. After college, Townsend plans to become a newspaper journalist or a news anchor in the Twin Cities. Later on in her career, she dreams of becoming a press secretary for the White House.