I attended the Greensboro Tea Party protest at noon. The crowd began to swell by about 11:30am. Lots of homemade signs, many of them biting or funny. For example:
?Protect My Country ? We’ll Do The Rest?
?Uncle Sam?s Pork Stinks?
?TEA: Taxes Enough Already?
?Born Free, Taxed to Death?
?I’m 12 with a 160k debt? (held up by a kid)
At around noon, the event began with the pledge of allegiance, followed by remarks from each of the three local volunteers who organized the Greensboro event.
I estimated the crowd at peak at around 1,200. So did the Greensboro News & Record, which has already posted a breaking news story on the event. A key bit:
The messages of those in the Greensboro crowd ranged from lowering
taxes to rage at corporate bailouts, but most in the largely
conservative crowd said they thought the key problem was too much
government.“The list of our grievances is very complex,” said Gerald
Hutchinson, a management consultant who spoke to the crowd from a stage
set for the occasion. “It’s not easy to reduce it to a single poster
board.”Many tried anyway.
“We Need Big Jobs, Not Big Government” and “Who’s Going to Bail Out
the Taxpayer?” read the picket signs of those filing into the plaza for
the noon rally. Some families brought their small children, who carried
signs reading “Keep Your Hands Away from My Piggy Bank” and “Honk if My
Daddy is Paying Your Mortgage.”A few in the crowd carried pitchforks and dressed in Revolutionary War costumes.
“I believe that we now have a tyrannical government,” said D’oyle
Moore, a professional historical reenactor and Baptist preacher. Moore
came dressed as Greensboro’s namesake, General Nathaniel Greene.
Moore did look the part, sword and all. I’ll post more comments later, as will other JLF folks in attendance at some of the other three dozen tea parties across North Carolina today.
UPDATE: Rhino Times editor John Hammer and Greensboro blogger Ed Cone counted 1,500 in attendance. Ed has more here.
