Following an afternoon of protests outside both a Wells Fargo branch and Mitt Romney's Des Moines headquarters on Wednesday, 15 or so Occupy Iowa demonstrators regrouped at their headquarters. Nathan Adeyemi, a member of Occupy Cedar Rapids hailing from eastern Iowa, called for volunteers to help disrupt a Ron Paul campaign appearance set to begin a half hour later. "I've been looking forward to it all day," Adeyemi told me on the short car ride to the State Fairgrounds.
But when the handful of protesters arrived at the building in which Paul would speak, it was clear that a last-minute mic check effort would be difficult to pull off. More than 500 people, many of them avid Paul supporters, were waiting out a series of endorsement speeches and patriotic sing-alongs that felt a bit like the opening act of a rock show. Paul soon took the stage... |