I Went Down To The Demonstration, To Get My Fair Share Of Abuse

Well, three demonstrations actually – I went to three of the tax day Tea Parties yesterday. These were the first ever protests I have attended and I found them to be pretty impressive. No abuse to be found, however ;-).

I took my new digital camera with me and learned that I am a really lousy photographer, as you can see below:

Glendale
The Glendale Tea Party was held outside Glendale City Hall, from Noon to 2:00 PM. There were a couple of speakers – the organizer Debi Devens spoke and comedian Evan Sayet also spoke. There was some assistant to a state legislator there, but he wasn’t as good as the other two.

I estimated turnout to be 400 to 500 people and then asked one of the police officers in attendance what he thought. He said he thought there were about 400 or so. Other estimates I have seen on the web say 250-300, but I think there were a few more than that.

Not a whole lot of media showed up. KTLA 5 and KCAL 9 had vans there. I saw some people who wore stuff for PJTV and Reason TV as well.

The Glendale photos I took turned out the best:

Burbank
John and Ken (local radio talk show hosts on KFI) did live broadcast outside the Republican Party Headquarters in Burbank from 4 PM to 5 PM. This wasn’t really a tea party – just their show, but I am guessing about a hundred people showed up. It is my understanding that it was a last minute thing they threw together. They spent a good portion of the show chewing out a Republican Party Spokesman for waffling about supporting Propositions 1A through 1F.

One interesting item is that the office was closed and locked. Strange to see in the middle of the day.

Only one half-way decent photo of the event. This is what I get for playing with the settings on my digital camera without really knowing what I am doing:

Van Nuys
The best Tea Party I went to was the one held at the Van Nuys courthouse. The official start time was 7:00 PM but people started showing up by 6 PM. My estimate was that between 2,000 and 3,000 people showed up. On the Kevin James show later in the evening, he said that the police estimate was almost 3,000 attendees.

The Van Nuys event also had a pretty impressive speaker list:

1. Kevin James – Local talk radio host on 870 KRLA from 9:00 PM to 11:00 PM
2. Michael Patrick Leahy – Host of Top Conservatives on Twitter
3. Stephen Kruiser – Comedian and Blogger.
4. Evan Sayet – Comedian. He spoke earlier at Glendale as well.
5. Morgan Brittany – Actress and former Dallas cast member.
6. Victoria Jackson – Actress and former Saturday Night Live cast member.
7. Mr. E Pluribus – Online TV Show host.

Only a couple of photos, which I took about a half-hour prior to the start of the event:

General Impressions
There were a few things that really struck me about the Glendale and Van Nuys Tea Parties:

• The Pledge of Allegiance was said. The national anthem was sung. I have a feeling that is not the case at a lot of left wing protests.
• I wasn’t the only first-time protest attendee. There were a lot of people who had never done this before.
• They seemed very non-partisan. Anti-politician in general, not just anti-Democrat.
• There were lots and lots of home-made signs. I didn’t get the feeling at all that this was any sort of top-down movement; it seem very grass roots.
• There were a lot of cars honking – at least one every few seconds it seemed like.

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