Seeding the Grass Roots
Stream, Download This is one of those times in history when a society must make a decision. Social commentators of the near future will say one of two things about us: If we fail to be heard, then these tea parties, these expressions of outrage across the nation, are the final lunge of a fading…
I’m hearing various media-approved estimates for the crowd at today’s tea party, and they seem to hover just north of 2,000 people. Not being sure what the methodology might have been — and suspecting it had a bit of that old give a little credit here, take a little adjustment there — I thought I’d…
…Old Glory… …and related friends.
The most substantive signs of the day came from a pair of nurses who turned out to protest the recent tax increase on medical expenses… One of the protesting nurses was kind enough to provide some additional detail…I work at Toll Gate radiology, I schedule all the exams. There’s a 2% tax increase for all…
The extended entry contains the last of my pictures from today’s tea party. What an event! Several of Matt Allen’s callers made an excellent point: No security was necessary. There will be no trash-pick-up crew needed. These were regular Americans, regular Rhode Islanders, gathering together to make their presence felt. And moreover, they were folks…
Honorable mention… Runner-up… And, for all of the ideas that it packs into a concise statement, the winner is…
The runaway winner in the best metaphorical costume division was the American patriot drowning in taxes…
One nice thing about Rhode Island Statehouse protests is that they provide some aesthetically pleasing backgrounds… On the other hand, the reverse angle gives a better sense of the size of the crowd…
I’ve moved the pictures into the extended entry for ease of loading. Another learning curve: I’ve been using a much better camera than usual, and it keeps reverting to large file sizes. When I get home to my main computer, I’ll shrink the images down.
I’m hearing rumors that this tea party is actually bigger than Boston’s. I don’t know about that, but it is definitely a large (and diverse) crowd. I’ll say this, too: I was embarrassed when Helen Glover introduced me as needing no introduction, but I’ve been finding that I’m not quite as anonymous in a crowd…
