One was a woman carrying a handful of signs urging everybody to read Ayn Rand and denouncing taxation as theft. (Interestingly enough, she'd come into the city by way of tax-supported BART.)
Another was a woman who, after I asked her what she thought people who can't afford life-saving treatments like dialysis should do, took a deep breath and launched into what seemed to be a memorized rant about the Declaration of Independence, and how it meant she didn't have to pay for deadbeats. The more she talked, the angrier she got at me, until finally she she denounced me as an "infiltrator" and marched away.
I approached a man and a woman who were holding a sign about Obama destroying the constitution. When I asked them about Bush's inroads into the constitution and whether they'd come out to demonstrate during his administration, the woman barked "I don't want to talk about that" and another woman who'd come with them sort of pushed me away by stepping in between us and nudging me hard with her shoulder. Since she seemed intent on escalating this into a shoving match, I left.
At the Ron Paul table I was told that every president since Franklin Roosevelt has been a "fascist." Don't know whether I should count them as "tea partiers," though. Around them were standing several of the Tea Party security types holding up signs pointing at them, and denouncing them as "infiltrators."
Another guy wearing a shirt with Martin Luther King Jr. on it told me proudly that King had been a Republican. We got into a polite argument about this.
I watched the speeches. They were pretty much of a muchness, led off by one of our local nutcases, Melanie Morgan, an especially venomous right wing talk-radio star who's remembered mainly for talking about electrocuting the editors at the New York Time. The rest were pretty much the same, all about how we mustn't give up our guns, and Obama was intent on destroying the country. The only exception was one guy who tried to talk about the war an Afghanistan and his opposition to it. He was loudly booed, so it was hard to hear a lot of what he was saying.
So someone found a Democrat at a tea party? Sorry, not impressed. You can also find an African American or two, but that doesn't change the fact that Tea Partiers tend to be predominantly white. The fact is that the Tea Party movement is overwhelmingly white, right wing, and Republican.
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Date: 9/5/10 20:01 (UTC)One was a woman carrying a handful of signs urging everybody to read Ayn Rand and denouncing taxation as theft. (Interestingly enough, she'd come into the city by way of tax-supported BART.)
Another was a woman who, after I asked her what she thought people who can't afford life-saving treatments like dialysis should do, took a deep breath and launched into what seemed to be a memorized rant about the Declaration of Independence, and how it meant she didn't have to pay for deadbeats. The more she talked, the angrier she got at me, until finally she she denounced me as an "infiltrator" and marched away.
I approached a man and a woman who were holding a sign about Obama destroying the constitution. When I asked them about Bush's inroads into the constitution and whether they'd come out to demonstrate during his administration, the woman barked "I don't want to talk about that" and another woman who'd come with them sort of pushed me away by stepping in between us and nudging me hard with her shoulder. Since she seemed intent on escalating this into a shoving match, I left.
At the Ron Paul table I was told that every president since Franklin Roosevelt has been a "fascist." Don't know whether I should count them as "tea partiers," though. Around them were standing several of the Tea Party security types holding up signs pointing at them, and denouncing them as "infiltrators."
Another guy wearing a shirt with Martin Luther King Jr. on it told me proudly that King had been a Republican. We got into a polite argument about this.
I watched the speeches. They were pretty much of a muchness, led off by one of our local nutcases, Melanie Morgan, an especially venomous right wing talk-radio star who's remembered mainly for talking about electrocuting the editors at the New York Time. The rest were pretty much the same, all about how we mustn't give up our guns, and Obama was intent on destroying the country. The only exception was one guy who tried to talk about the war an Afghanistan and his opposition to it. He was loudly booed, so it was hard to hear a lot of what he was saying.
So someone found a Democrat at a tea party? Sorry, not impressed. You can also find an African American or two, but that doesn't change the fact that Tea Partiers tend to be predominantly white. The fact is that the Tea Party movement is overwhelmingly white, right wing, and Republican.