as parades, states Through the new media of journalism, urban festivalreached an expanding audience. . . Even the new, bourgeoispublic sphere can be seen as a locus for relating and debatingthe deeds of a politically active populace (20).Everybody was getting involved. While these people debated the newmeaning of nationalism, among other issues, just the fact that moreand more people were partaking in these events was part of that newdefinition of nationalism. At a first glance, it may be difficult to see the importance of aparade or other sort of celebration in political terms. However, theywere a phenomenal way to express a political idea, to try to get otherpeople to jump on ones political bandwagon, or most importantly, toincite political action. Waldstreicher writes ...celebration, which mayappear to us distanced, second-hand and unconnected to real life orpolitics, seemed at the time to open up a greater sphere of action formore and more citizens(111) Action is the key word in that sentence. If a certain parade or any other kind of celebration draws forth aparticular political desire in an on-looker, then the parade has fulfilledits purpose. The public display of any kind of political sentiment thatperhaps causes people to affiliate themselves with a certain politicalgroup creates a healthy, nationalistic country. Nationalism doesntnecessarily mean the agreement of all people, but that people areactively participating, in some form, in the political arena. This isessentially the role that parades and the like have in the formation ofearly American nationalism; they got more people involved in politics. It seems that parades and print seem to complement each otherin the most useful of ways. Before print, it is imaginable that it wouldbe very difficult for citizens to know of any kind of celebration thathappened elsewhere. With print, information that was taken down bysomeone who was actually present can be distributed. ...
