Teabagging News Coming In
News from the teabagging parties is starting to come in. Here's MSNBC reporting on the one in Washington, DC:
All right, I knew I'd find it -- here's Fox News reporting on the same event.
The Washington Post added this detail.
The Post says that "hundreds of protesters" gathered in Lafayette Square.
It was a great idea, really. Take a million tea bags and dump them in Lafayette Park to protest government spending. Hip, hip, hoo-ray!
But a funny thing happened en route to a visually pleasing Tax Day protest. The National Park Service said the tea party protesters didn't have the proper permit to dump their bags.
So instead of a raucous visual demonstration, all that was left was images of the tea party packing up their boxes of tea on a cold, soggy day in D.C.
Doh!
"We have a million tea bags here, and we don't have a place to put them because it's not on our permit," said Rebecca Wales, lead organizer of D.C. Tea Party.
Fight the power, folks, but next time check your permits before acquiring 1 million tea bags.
A local think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said it would allow the dumping of the tea bags in its 12th floor conference room instead. Not quite the same impact, though.
What else could go wrong? Another protest that was planned for the Treasury Department was also scrapped due to permit issues.
Doh!
But at least they remembered the tea, right? That's a start.
Who's up for protesting Tax Day 2010? (MSNBC) 1 Million Tea Bags, But No Place to Dump
All right, I knew I'd find it -- here's Fox News reporting on the same event.
Live on the scene from the D.C. Tea Party where I just spoke to a rowdy, raucous crowd of about 3,700 people in a pouring rain. They took the day off work, some brought the whole families, to send a strong message against bailouts, massive government growth, and the efforts of elites on Wall Street and in Washington to run our lives.This is the beginning of a new populist revolt, and it’s happening all over the country. The top-down, big money, big government forces of Soros, MoveOn.org, and Organizing for America are about to meet a true bottom-up populist steamroller. Elites will ignore this at their own peril.
The atmosphere is absolutely electric. Nobody who is here could call this “AstroTurf.” The crowd is booming forth chants of “no more bailouts,” and “we’re the boss.” They’re railing against energy taxes, government health care takeovers, and the never-ending bailouts.
Tim Geithner yanked our permit to protest in front of the Treasury Department (scared, perhaps?) at the last second, but the decentralized Tea Party movement was ready to go anyway, combining forces with another Tea Party already scheduled across the street in Lafayette Park.
This is the beginning of a new populist revolt, and it’s happening all over the country. The top-down, big money, big government forces of Soros, MoveOn.org, and Organizing for America are about to meet a true bottom-up populist steamroller. Elites will ignore this at their own peril. (Fox) PHIL KERPEN: Live From a Tea Party — The Atmosphere Is Electric!
The Washington Post added this detail.
About midafternoon, the rally was temporarily suspended after what appeared to be a box of tea was thrown over the White House fence and officials evacuated the park as a security precaution, police said.
The Post says that "hundreds of protesters" gathered in Lafayette Square.
posted by JimK at 4:08 PM
12 Comments:
Check out this link - it got rowdy and is the perfect epitome of the tea party mindsets - http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2009/04/teabaggers-gone-wild.html
More rowdiness, right here in DC, is reported on AOL news this morning.
Tea-Baggers Clash With Counter-Protesters in DC
By Tommy Christopher
At today's Washington, DC Tax Day Tea Party, a confrontation between Tea Partiers and a small group of counter-protesters escalated to pushing and shoving before organizers stepped in to quell the disturbance.
Alex Lawson led a group of 5 in a bit of protest performance art. Dressed as billionaires and carrying signs thanking working people for carrying their tax burdens, they stood close to the stage in Lafayette Park, holding their signs aloft.
I was there trying to get some shots from the stage, but the crush of the crowd made it impossible. When a man behind me asked if a woman could lower her sign, she replied that she was "blocking Acorn signs."
I made my way over to Alex's group, who were not affiliated with any organization, and began shooting video. The crowd around them began shouting, demanding that they lower their signs. Very shortly, the crowd began snatching their signs, and pushing and shoving them. After a few tense moments, Tea Party organizer Rebecca Wales began yelling at the crowd to give the signs back, and managed to calm the situation.
No-one was injured in the incident, and Alex's group made their way peacefully out of the crowd. Several minutes later, while being interviewed by a documentary crew, Alex's group was menaced by a man in the crowd, who shouted, "When was the last time you had your ass kicked?" Another man yelled, at the two young women in Alex's group, "How much for the hookers?"
I interviewed Alex later, and he said that the man who had yelled at them then continued to follow them, attempting to physically restrain their movements, until Alex threatened to get the police.
The video from the incident will be available soon.
The protest was a generally peaceful one, save these incidents and the one I reported earlier [Pennsylvania Avenue Closed Due to Tea Bag Attack]. It was extremely crowded in Lafayette Park, and the rain was very heavy at times.
Dana Milbank's first person account of the teabaggers in Lafayette Park
Speakers included FOX News Tobin Smith, Anericans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist, and 2008 GOP Presidential candidate Alan Keyes.
But FOX News and the GOP had nothing to do with it! (wink)
FOX has a big payroll:
250K people gathered nationwide
keep pushing the pro-tax line, guys
look who Sir B.O. is palling around with now:
"President Barack Obama had a secret and impromptu meeting with the Grateful Dead in advance of legendary jam band's performance at the nearby Verizon Center. The surviving members of the Grateful Dead credit Obama for bringing them back together."
That should make Bill Ayers and all the deadheads at TTF happy.
Just 250,000? (discounting the lie Cavuto said about the area where there are only 5,000 folks).
Heck, President Obama can pull in more than that by saying a speech and that was BEFORE he was president.
National movement my pinky toe.
In article Jim referenced above, FOX News claimed there was a "raucous crowd of about 3,700 people in a pouring rain" at the DC protest but the Washington Post reported there were only 500. FOX news' report was off by a factor of 7.4.
250,000 divided by 7.4 is 33,784.
This "national" movement is more like a hangnail.
Actually, over almost a half century of reading it, I've found the Post to not always be reliable. Especially with these crowd numbers.
Of course, crazy old bats will believe the source they want to believe.
Some would say a "crazy old bat" is a person who continues to read an "unreliable" newspaper for 50 years.
you just have to know what to believe and what to take with a grain of salt
I love the Post
it's fun to read and has a lot of interesting stuff in it daily
still, it's an old acquaintence and, just like a person, you get to know it's flaws
I hope they survive the coming newspaper shakedown
oh, and Bea, you're crazy
Tommy Christopher of DailyDose.us attended the DC teabagging event on April 15, 2009, in Lafayette Park and confirms the Washington Post's crowd estimate of 500. He has posted his video of the protest, counter-protest, the theft of the counter-protesters' protest signs, the demand by the event organizer to return the signs (those they had not already destroyed), and a threat phrased as a question by one of the teabaggers: "When's the last time you got your ass kicked?"
Video: Protesters Clash with Counter-Protesters at DC Tax Day Tea Party
By Tommy Christopher
Apr 17th 2009 10:31AM
Wednesday's DC Tax Day Tea Party may not have been huge, but it certainly was interesting. For 3 and a half hours, 500 or so people braved the at times heavy rain to express their frustration at a litany of ills. Although the demonstrations are ostensibly about taxes and government spending, the protesters' signs covered a wide range of topics.
While there were a few rousing chants by the crowd, there was far more heckling about the poor audio than anything else. One organizer apologized for having only "a little girl voice," to which a man in the crowd screamed "Then let someone else talk!"
At one point, I made my way closer to the stage to get some video of the speakers. The crowd was pack in tight up there, and as Fox News contributor Tobin Smith was speaking, I found out there were several counter-protesters near me, quietly holding signs. The group was led by Alex Lawson. While they did engage in more vocal demonstrations away from the crowd, all they did up by the stage was hold signs. Here's what happened:
Video 1
Unfortunately, I couldn't stick with Alex's group any longer because I had to get to the White House briefing, but I caught up with Alex later, and he talked about what happened:
Video 2
My initial reaction to Alex and his crew, whom I saw awhile before the fracas walking through the crowd, was an eye-rolling annoyance at the seeming smugness of it all. At first, I thought they were with the Tea Party. I had seen a similar act at CPAC this year, only they were throwing around "Obama Bucks" with a picture of a cigarette-smoking President on the face.
I even got a little bit aggravated when I tried to interview them afterward, and they wouldn't break character. One of them replied to me, "Character? What do you mean, character?" It was amusing to see talk-show host Greg Knapp,one of the event's speakers, trying to debate them on the square while their characters voiced vociferous agreement.
However, speaking to Alex later, it made sense to me that maintaining their roles was crucial to dealing with a hostile crowd. Here's some video that they shot of their act:
Video 3
The event organizers were uniformly professional, and did their best to manage a bad situation. They had originally been given permission to set up on the sidewalk across from the White House, but were forced to move into the park by the Secret Service.
Still, the park is small, and the crowding around the stage was dangerous. The crowd ignored pleas to keep the sidewalks open for passage, and the DC police were nowhere to be seen.
While most of the crowd was spirited and well-behaved, the knuckleheads stood out. This incident, plus the tea bag attack on the White House and the odd hecklers, overshadowed the work that the organizers tried to do. The tea bags that were thrown over the White House fence effectively ended the protest an hour early, as the park had to be closed.
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