Greg offered a rousing comment to my post on abandoned rules changes that oughtn’t be allowed to slip into unnoticed into the archives:

Simply the serious THREAT of a picket and demonstration killed this, people. Think about that the next time you’re just too busy to take an hour out of your lives for the sake of a cause that affects your life every moment of every day.
There’s no reason we can’t put a few hundred people on the front steps just as our way of saying “Don’t screw up this budget” and possibly make some real change.
Maybe make the news and let people across the state know that yeah, Rhode Island does have some of that hope that’s on the state seal. It’s not over. We can still fight for our state. I don’t care about party, and I’d rather not see a lot of partisanship about it. Left and right in this state feel it in their wallets, and a good 70% of the state is against illegal aliens and what they’re doing here.
All it takes is the THREAT to make a change. Imagine the size of the change you can make if you get off your rear ends and start yelling.

He followed with this email making a great suggestion:

Let’s put Dan Yorke and Matt Allen broadcasting live from the State House with trucks with jumbo plasma screens mounted on them and watch Capital TV right there and raise holy Hell all night long.
Make a big friggin’ party out of it. Burgers and dogs and t-shirts and a real celebration of the freedom of expression. Start advertising it months in advance.
Seriously. Imagine how freaked out they’d be if we were so loud we could boo and they could hear us.

They’d certainly know we weren’t sleeping during the slip-it-by hours of the legislative night.