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Rally-goers heard through 'Signs for Sanity'

Flickr photo by Cosmic Smudge.

There was no shortage of political signs among the estimated 250,000 people who attended Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity Saturday on the National Mall.  Public Citizen’s voice was heard through the 5,000 signs it distributed bearing the winning slogans from its Signs for Sanity Contest.

While Stewart might have been spreading his message on stage, organizations and individuals took to the mall.

“One of the motivating reasons that people are attending is their frustration with the overweening corporate presence in politics and we want to give voice to that,” Public Citizen’s President Robert Weissman told Politico.

Public Citizen also collected signatures at the rally  for a constitutional amendment overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.
Stewart’s and Colbert’s antics were entertaining and certainly the highlight of the rally, but the people in attendance and the messages they brought also helped define the rally.

“What is it that is going to define the rally the morning after?” James Poniewozik, a senior writer on popular culture for Time magazine, told NPR. “Is it what is said from the stage? Or the groups of people that show up, and the signs they carry, and their political leanings?”