Brian was at the Nashville rally, Cranky was at the Philly rally and Michele and myself attended the Knoxville rally. Let the photoblogging/reporting commence……

KNOXVILLE:

The crowd filled up the World’s Fair Park Amphitheater and spilled into the surrounding park. As expected, the crowd was well behaved, polite and patriotic.

The speakers were good. There was no GOP cheerleading. I saw much more anti-incumbent, anti-congress, anti-both-party sentiment, which is what I expected.

There were a ton of excellent signs, creative types were everywhere.

The Sunsphere never looked so good.

One thing that I did NOT appreciate was the anti-abortion group who had very large graphic pictures of abortions posted around the area, as well as a truck driving around the park with the same disturbing images plastered on the sides. This was a family event and there was no need for their shock images at a place where there were a lot of young children. Not to mention they had the wrong crowd – if ever there was a largely pro-life contingent it was this group. They need to use better judgment when picking their rallies.

Also read: Why I took my family to a tea party.

Stay tuned for further updates on this post from my cohorts and thanks to all the good folks who came out and made it a great event. Now, get involved, dammit!

Video of the Knoxville rally, via Jack Lail at the KNS.

NASHVILLE:

These Nashville Tea Party pix were sent to me by Brian – if he wants to expand on them, he can. The word from other Nashville bloggers was an estimate of about 7,500 folks.

BRIAN 9:00pm: I don’t know if I’d say 7,500.  Realize that Nashville has “parking issues”.  There aren’t a lot of spaces so a lot of people would just drive by and honk.  Just like the Founding Fathers would have done had they horses that went “honk”.

I guarantee you if we had DUI laws around back when the Founding Fathers dressed up like injuns’ and started throwing cargo overboard that this country  would have been founded on indecent exposure as well as public intoxication.

Better yet, Lewd & Lascivious Liberty.

Not today though.

It’s not that kind of party.

It’s Wednesday at 12:00 noon, 45 degrees and we’re all meeting up on our lunch hour because we’re too busy working to try to pay for this shit.

At some point, you’ve got to make some hard choices and say “we’ve got to cut back”.  It is not the government’s job to save an entire car company or fire and replace it’s officers.  It is not our elected officials jobs to go overseas and apologize on our behalf when we have absolutely nothing to be sorry about much less apologizing for a war where you still have thousands of your troops in the theater you are apologizing for.  At some point, you don’t lick the boot heel of international terrorists and brag about using an $800 million Warship to take out a 16 year old Somali hijacker.

Obviously, some teleprompters may disagree.

Sure, there were a couple of morons.  About four of them holding Infowars.com signs and walking around in black hoodies like the prepubescent gotards they are.  Safety in numbers, boys.  And a helmet haired, obese Donk jerkwad randomly asking people if they wanted to abolish Medicare. But other than that,there was a good vibe.

My question to both the blog and the attendees is “what now?”

Do we mill about in an orderly fashion?  Do we flood the chatrooms with mindless blather about “personal responsiblity” and “deficit spending”?
If this event is a clarion let it be one thing – YOU HAVE NO ORGANIZATION.

There was no sound beyond arm’s length of the speakers.  There was nobody out working the crowd.  There was like one dude from Channel 5 that I saw.  We’re two blocks from the station.  If you weren’t interrupting the local Press’s lunch break, this wouldn’t have gotten as much play as it has.

I’d say closer to 3500-4000 atttendees as people were rotating through their lunch breaks.  We don’t get an hour and a half.

Call out the band.  Make this an event.  Have food.  Have sign-up booths.
As a conservative, you’re naturally introverted anyways.   Don’t let these people walk away with nothing to show for it.

And if you see the Nashville City Paper’s editorial writer / Nashville Post’s blogger walking around this event after slurring everyone in attendance as “teabaggers” for the last month – punch him for me, wouldja?

Channel 5 speculates 10,000 people in attendance.

PHILLY:

T’was a cold and rainy day in Philly’s Love Park. Turnout was light; about 200 people.

However, the rain couldn’t people from getting their messages out there. I guess he gets Cooper Anderson’s joke, although I doubt it elicits the same excitement as it did for Cooper.

Some creative folks actually anticipated the rain.

The media did turn out. The local news did a fair job of covering it.

If there was a counter-protest, only this guy had the courage to make himself visible. One thing that really suprised me was the civility. The protestor was genial and an older guy engaged him in soft-spoken conversation. This is not the Philly I know.

Speaking of surprises… Who knew that there were fiscally conservative hippies?

Yes, the guy on the left has a red-white-and-blue mohawk. He’s a vet of the Iraq war.

And what protest would be complete without these gents? One of the speakers was going on about the history of the Fed. It did diminish the credibility of the movement in my opinion. Note that the Paul supporters seem to have run out of enthusiasm – the banner wasn’t updated since the election.

It was a very good turn out considering this is a very blue city.

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