Tuesday I went to “The New Mavericks” reception co-hosted by the Black Republican Mayors Association and the Georgia Republican Party.  They honored Sen. Tim Scott, four Congressmen and two Georgia delegates – all male.  There was only one mayor on stage, from Aurora, IL.  The chair of the Georgia Republican Party was the one white man on the stage.  At that event, women served; they didn’t speak.  The RNC reported that 55 delegates to the 2024 convention are Black, up from 18 in 2016.

 

 

I missed the Independent Women’s Forum toast to “Women Who Make Our Country Great” because I went to Convention Fest:  The Official Delegate Experience, which was held in the streets outside the Fiserve Forum and Baird Hall as well as some space inside Baird.  To get to that one you not only needed a credential of some sort, but a USSS pass (which I have). 

 

Concerned Women for America parked its pink bus across from the Baird Center the week before the RNC.  No one was home.  When Convention Fest opened on Tuesday afternoon, they set up a pink tent, from which its leaders preached to whomever passed by.  It calls itself “the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization” but its focus is evangelical Christian.  The slogan on the side of its pink bus captures this emphasis: “She Prays, She Votes.” A prayer precedes each sermon.

Open for three hours every afternoon of convention week, Convention Fest featured many small businesses as well as groups.  A lot of the businesses were selling food and drink. Many others were selling Trump stuff.

The United States Concealed Carry Association had a lot of space inside and outside of Baird.  Among other things it said: “Girls Just Wanna Have Guns” and “Pro-Gun is Pro-Woman.” 

 

Two men were selling a lengthy book entitled The Collected Poems of Donald J. Trump for $45.   They had collected Trump’s tweets and reordered them into poems! Volume I was released in 2019, to give a “glimpse into the mind and musings of one of America's most iconic figures.”  Volume II is coming out this fall.  One of the editors told me that they wanted to see DJT made the poet laureate of the United States, as well as President.  Could Trump appoint himself?

 

The Nixon Foundation created a War Memorial Center in a large room in the Baird Center.  It contained several panels on women veterans saying WE ARE NOT INVISIBLE.

 

The Wisconsin Historical Society had a room nearby, with panels on woman suffrage. There were other subjects, but women’s activism was well represented.