'Vote for Freedom' Rally Brings Election Eve to Fort Lauderdale's Las Olas Oceanside Park
Under the theme 'the night before we vote, we rally,' a coalition of more than 70 South Florida organizations closes the campaign with music and speeches on the beach - and no endorsements.
Fort Lauderdale - South Florida's campaign season closes Monday night not at a candidate's podium but at a beachside park, where the We the People Coalition stages its 'Vote for Freedom' rally at Las Olas Oceanside Park, 3000 E. Las Olas Boulevard, on the eve of the November 3 general election. Doors open at 5:30 p.m., live music starts at 6:00 p.m. and the program begins at 6:30 p.m., according to the organizers' announcement.
The event is billed as a nonpartisan celebration of voting rights and civic engagement - the coalition states plainly that it does not endorse candidates. Its listed speakers mix elected officials, labor leaders and advocates: Broward Teachers Union president Anna Fusco, Florida State Rep. Ashley Gantt, former Assistant Secretary of Labor Jose Javier Rodriguez, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Transinclusive Group executive director Tatiana Williams. The Deep Fried Funk Band provides the live entertainment.
More than 70 South Florida organizations are participating, the coalition says, and the evening is free and open to the public. The organizers frame the rally around the mechanics and meaning of the vote itself - participation, and the freedoms they say unite communities across Florida and the nation - landing hours before polls open at 7 a.m. Tuesday.
For Fort Myers readers, the Fort Lauderdale rally is the other coast's version of a statewide Election Eve pattern: campaigns closing in the big metros, civic groups working the final hours, and everything after 7 p.m. Tuesday belonging to the count.
