merig00 | Tax Day Tea Party

This was my third tea party. First one was last April 15th and we had another one last summer at Time Square. So having some experience I decided to show up a little bit early to get a better spot near a stage. And was I glad I came early!

NYC Tea Party this year was just a block away from the major NYC post office. So as I was approaching it I saw some people crowding, slogan shouting and police on the steps to the post office. Weird, I thought, did they start half-hour early and in a wrong location? And where's the stage? As I approached the middle of the block I realized that what we had there is several leftist groups, some weird promotion company and a lot of busy people going on their way to and from post office. It's a tax day after all. And all the police and barriers were there to make some space and set up mobile post offices that will be open till midnight to collect tax returns from all the procrastinators of NYC. So, as I found out later, all the lefties were there to harass and annoy busy taxpayers and not to counter protest Tea Party, since they didn't file for permits. All of them promptly left exactly half an hour before the Tea Party protest began. Several stuck around but not as a part of the group. Also organizers were saying that someone was trying to protest behind the stage, but we couldn't see or hear them.

So without further due, let me introduce you to (all pics are clickable for larger size):

Bunch of kids with central theme "taxes for schools not for war", "money for students, not soldiers". From what I understood they were representing kids swimming in the water with sharks of capitalism, military spending and something else. And Google told me that DRUM "was founded in 2000 to build the power of South Asian low wage immigrant workers, youth, and families facing racial profiling, deportation, and economic injustice in New York City to win civil & immigrant rights and economic justice for all."

I'm not sure when they started but they began packing promptly at 6:30pm

And of course Code Pink just had to crawl out - seems like they were collecting signatures for something, but I'm not sure since they were engaged in argument with 2 jewish men over Israel. One of the men was recording everything on camera so probably soon we'll have a youtube video of Code Pink activist trying to smack him with clipboard.

The three ladies with clipboards are from Code Pink. The guy behind them was their fan. And a flower hat in front is from Grandma For Something(I don't remember what, probably some kind of geriatric justice). There were a small group of Grandmas but they stayed mostly with kids from DRUM so I didn't pay attention to them. What I missed was a woman who was standing behind me with a white on black button which said 9/11 and a huge question mark. All out of sudden she started screaming at the jewish guy "if you like Israel so much, why don't you move there", then she turned around and bent over to moon the guy. Thank heaven she didn't pull anything down.

And now to my favorite group, Billionaires for Capitalism

They arrived, bunch of people with cameras ran up to them, they waited for a while after that proceeded to thing their billionares anthem. After that people lost interest in them and I think they left. I'm not sure cause at that time I heard music at the Tea Party stage a block away and I moved there. But I haven't seen any of those moonbats at the party.

Ooh and I almost forgot. Some company promoting stress reliever vitamins or something was there. At first I thought it was just another leftist show, but it actually was a real company giving out samples to people who came to post office with their taxes http://www.cnbc.com/id/36454645
I took the picture later, when they were leaving and passed by the protest:

So to the Tea Party protest!
Just to give you some perspective, I'm standing right next to the Tea Party stage which is behind me. The post office stairs are on the picture. The protestors were in front of those steps.

I've got a nice spot in the first half of the first section of the column. I envy all you people who got to hang out in the park. We had to stand in a long column in the middle of the street. The crowd got denser later but overall, judging to the tax day tea party last year, we had about third to a quoter of attendees this time.

As the protest began, the signs and flags went up

The post is already heavy on pics, so probably the two most simple and my favorite signs of the protest

Here I was trying to take a picture of people in the second half of the first block of the protest. Overall I think we had 2.5 block long column and also people on sidewalk across the street. The tripods on the pic are from different camera crews that were filming the protest. We had several networks there. I saw vans of CBS, ABC and CNN and I know CNBC was also there. There were so many signs and they were big and held so high that news crews had to constantly ask people to lower them because we were blocking the stage for them.

We even had a visitor from Massachusetts

And our own tea party doctors, not props like Obama had, but a dozen or so real doctors from NYU Medical Center. And they were proudly holding "MDs Against Obamacare" signs. I sure hope that they won't get fired by NYU for showing up at the Tea Party. I saw them being interviewed by one of the networks, hopefully I'll be able to find the video somewhere online.

And at some point we finally got some counter-protesters from BailoutThePeople

But they were promptly blocked by several signs and mostly ignored since they just stood there quietly. And 20-30 minutes later police asked them to leave since they were blocking the side walk for the people not form the protest to pass us by.

There were also three black guys carrying "2nd American Revolution" and "Audit The Fed" signs but I'm not sure if they were trying to discredit someone or what. If you have a clue, let me know.

They also disappeared after 20 minutes, but as I was leaving at the end, I saw them across the street, so I guess they did stuck around till the end.

I also got lucky to stand next to what ended up being CNBC camera and I caught arrival of Lou Dobbs. He gave the central speech to the crowd at the end of the protest.

And apparently I appeared on national TV: http://merig00.livejournal.com/362652.html

Later someone pointed out to me that we have more counter protesters... across the street... five floors above the ground

As any freeloaders they were planning to hang up that banner and leave, but Nature and weather made them work since the banner was constantly blown up by the wind.

Organizers and speakers posing together for a group picture and saying last words to us

And as I was coming back from Tea Party today I was again passing by the post office and there were two huge lines to mobile post-offices not counting all the people inside the actual building... and it was getting dark and started to rain. And they were just standing there clutching to the dark-yellow envelopes. It was a sad sight.

Overall the protest was as energized as last year even though smaller. Several new faces on stage. One of the speakers, made the same speech as last year, word for word. And the band was cheesy though the beat was nice.