In the Morning before the Rally
On Friday, August 30, Donald Trump made a campaign stop in Johnstown. I mounted my GoPro on my bike to get a sense of the carnival atmosphere surrounding it. The above video was taken around 11:30am, 2 hours before they opened the doors to the rally. I took footage of the line waiting to get into the rally. I then circled around to the other side of the war memorial to sample the vendors.
First I ran into Cambria County Republican Party Chair Jackie Kulback. We exchanged pleasantries and she walked away. I asked her before the rally about filming local events. At first she said yes but then I told her I also film Democratic events. She then said no. I said to her “didn’t she want equal time?” She still said no.
Then I met a man named John Wright who came to the rally from Corpus Christi Texas. He was promoting documentary film History of the U.S. Healthcare System. He argues that the current problems in the U.S. healthcare system began in the 1970s when we moved away from the Hill-Burton nonprofit model. I asked him about efforts to create a single payer system here similar to the Canadian model. He said he did not know anything about it. The captioning software was not always accurate in representing conversations. He did express an admiration for Robert F Kennedy Jr.
After that I spoke with volunteers for turning point action and David McCormick’s Senate Campaign. I asked who his campaign manager was but couldn’t get a straight answer. I later found out that it was Matt Gruda.
After filming the morning crowd I recorded this brief interview with counter Trump organizer Faylynn Kassander. She is also an organizer for the AFSCME union in Cambria County. These protesters were interviewed by the national and international press as seen in the image below.
When they Opened the Arena Door
Below is the video I took on a second jaunt on my bike around 1pm to see how the crowd had grown just as they were about open the door to the arena. The line to get in ran about halfway up the hill. An ambulance came to assist someone in the humid weather. As I was coming back down on the bike, a herd of deer was spooked by the crowd and ran into the city. The Trump campaign stop in Johnstown did have a carnival atmosphere to it. Inside the rally a man was arrested for trying to rush the press area.
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