Prodromus

 The Tampa Tea Party was a huge success. Although most media outlets downplayed the number of folks that attended, you can clearly see that this was not a small protest.  My guess would be well over 2,000. This guy was one of my favorites, he walked through the crowd, creating quite a buzz.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  The protest was held in Lykes Gaslight Park in downtown Tampa Bay.  Protestors walked back and forth across the street while cars waited at red lights.  The folks in the cars  leaned out hollaring support and honking their horns in approval.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Look at this crowd!  Why was MSNBC minimizing the crowd sizes?  You can see hundreds in this one view, there was this number of people on all sides of me.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Folks of all backgrounds in the crowd, not just your crazy right leaning whackos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The population of Tampa is 10% African-American.  I do not believe that they we represented at the same rate as other races, however there were quite a few.  This did not appear to be a race or class protest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Most protestors were outraged by two issues.
 1) The excessive spending by Congress
 2)  Unfair tax policies

 

 

 

 

 

 While some protestors were direct in blaming Obama, I believe that they were in the minority.  Most seemed to blame government as a whole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 These folks were singling out Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank.  ”Congress is a Toxic Asset”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Don’t Tread on Me

 

 

 

 

The G20 protests in central London turned violent today ahead of tomorrow’s summit, with a band of demonstrators close to the Bank of England storming a Royal Bank of Scotland branch, and baton-wielding police charging a sit-down protest by students.

Much of the protesting, from an estimated 4,000 people in the financial centre of the capital, was peaceful, but some bloody skirmishes broke out as police tried to keep thousands of people in containment pens surrounding the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street. A minority of demonstrators seemed determined to cause damage, seeking confrontation as they surged towards police lines. Late tonight, much of the City remained cordoned off.

Perahps the G20 is something worthy of demonstrating, but who are these kids?  Half of them are wearing Nike, Puma, and Atlanta Braves gear.  Give me some people living off the land with some locally made clothes and then I will listen to you as opponents of capitalism and the global economy.  It is a worthy event to protest, just don’t look like whiny hypocrites that participate in the system that you are protesting.

The majority of these protesters are just wannabes. They missed the great protests of are time and are overly attracted to the “mystique of protesting”. Most have no depth of understanding of the issues and are really nothing more than caricatures.   These pictures show a sad kind of protest. It’s more smashing and looting than protesting. I always wonder if these people after a protest think, what did it change? They are not winning peoples hearts and minds with this.