Joe at Bessemer Opinions has pictures from yesterday’s teabagger rally in Birmingham’s Kelly Ingram Park, as does Bradford Daly via flickr. I have a few below the fold – forgot my real camera. Joe notes, and I second, the irony of a bunch of over-privileged white people bemoaning their “oppression” on the site of real civil rights struggles. My skin is still crawling from what I saw and heard.
We were treated to a Sarah-Palin-wannabe proclaiming herself a “Christian-American” and railing about the oath to defend our country from enemies “foreign and domestic”. We all know who those domestic enemies are. Lots of talk of “taking our country back”, as if they are the only true citizen patriots of the US. Plenty of caveats that they’re talking about the 2010 elections, but reality is some of these people would relish a coup. Plenty of soul-stirring music about our country turning into the “USS of A” if we don’t do something NOW.
The birthers didn’t come out till near the end. One woman wanted support of her birther lawsuits and announced a forthcoming Continental Congress. If Democrats had done anything similar under Bush, I truly believe there would have been arrests for sedition.
The program wrapped up with a plug for a local radio station that carries Rush Limbaugh (half-hearted cheers from the crowd) and Glenn Beck (more enthusiasm from the crowd). They were shilling for Sarah Palin’s book signing (even bigger cheers).
Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim James was in attendance, and I saw quite a few of his campaign signs. None for Roy Moore, but some featuring the Ten Commandments. [ETA: Don notes in comments that there are some Moore signs in Bradford Daly's pictures linked above. I didn't see them on Monday, but I'm glad to hear it, as it's another indication that Moore and James will split the wingnut vote in the Republican primary.]
There were a couple of African-American speakers on hand in an attempt to defuse charges of racism, but the 99% white crowd belied those efforts with caricatures of Obama
and their ugliness toward the largely African-American counter-protesters.
Several teabaggers tried to pick fights, walking past the counter-protesters and yelling at the top of their lungs, “Obama’s a communist!” over and over. One (pictured below) did his best to start an argument with the people representing civil rights foot soldiers. He insisted his t-shirt was just a play on words and not a criticism of Obama. Yeah, right.
Joe recounts:
There were a few people there who were protesting the protesters. The woman holding this sign [it reads "Yes, We Must Have a Public Option] had been denied a procedure by Blue Cross Blue Shield, and now she doesn’t have insurance. Her husband was threatened by one of the teabaggers, who told him he could “make him need some healthcare” after making fun of his weight. Classy.
I was on hand for that lovely display as well. The teabaggers were angry because they ran over the time allowed by their permit and the police asked them to wrap it up. Instead of announcing that, one of the speakers said, “They’re saying we have to leave,” without specifying who “they” was, inciting the crowd to turn around and roar at the counter-protesters.
As the event wound down, a white man walked by the civil rights banner, smirked, and said to an older black men, “If we didn’t leave, would the dogs get called on us?” I’m still trying to pick up my jaw off the ground over that one. Was he just being ugly, or does he really think he has common cause with someone who lived through the dogs, the fire hoses, the bombings, and the assassinations?
More pictures below the fold:
He looks so proud of his bigotry
Nothing like a little eliminationism in the mix
Non-partisan teabagger
Spelling-challenged teabagger
Kathy, thanks for braving the crazies. I sincerely hope that Tim James is lining up with the wrong team. If the Republican party nationally is going to respond to all this friction by purging moderates and rallying “the base,” then red states like ours are going to be increasingly unpleasant places to live.
My Polyanna instinct has kicked in. Maybe some of these guys who traveled to scary dark downtown, and lived to tell the tale, will have a glimmer of light poke through in the dark recesses of their minds. Yes, I’m a cockeyed optimist but it’s what gets me through. I can still see the irony of anti-government protesters exercising their freedom of assembly in a taxpayer-funded public park which celebrates civil rights victories that the protesters neither appreciate nor embrace.
If you go down to the park today,
You’re sure of a big surprise.
If you go down to the park today,
You’d better go in disguise.
For every crank that ever there was
Will gather there for certain because…
Today’s the day the teabaggers have their protest!
Protest time for Dittoheads,
They wave their signs while listening to rousing talks,
See them quiver, full of dread,
Obama’s nothing but another Marx,
Soon the country will be gone,
There’s nothing but a Communist hell in sight,
At six o’clock they jump in the Yukons
and head back to the ‘burbs
because the Negroes come out at night.
[A work in progress. The video practically directs itself, doesn't it?]
Del, we need to call Neil Patrick Harris right now. He could do for this what he did for Prop 8: The Musical.
I would settle for your talented DD posting it on YouTube
There are at least two Roy Moore signs shown in Bradford Daly’s flicker slide show, one very prominently in his first photo, I believe.
In any large crowd of protesters there will always be some who carry inappropriate signs and say inappropriate things. IMHO, it’s also inappropriate to call these protesters “teabaggers” as so many progressives do because as almost everyone knows that word has a derogatory (and inflaming) meaning.
I thought they called themselves teabaggers?
I don’t know of any who call themselves teabaggers. I’ve heard several people at different rallies express their frustration and fear in an inappropriate manner, but how does one pull them back without infringing their First Amendment rights? There have been speakers who have rebuked what was said, and others standing nearby who have challenged their words, but they certainly have the right to speak their opinion. A question for you: why did you go to the rally?
Sun Tzu tells us it is wise to know our enemy. I respect these folks’ right to free speech (although I would not go so far as to say I’d die to defend it) but I also think that given the oft-inflammatory nature of their remarks, and the even uglier things they say when they’re not in front of a microphone but in the barber’s chair or the hunting camp, they are my enemy and the enemy of those I care about and the kind of country I hope to live in. I’m grateful to Kathy for giving us a glimpse into what’s going on at their “tea parties.” And I hope the Secret Service is keeping an eye on them as well.
Pam, the “Party Like It’s 1773″ crowd, whose t-shirts were prominently represented on Monday, has a website called “Tea Bag Congress”. Honestly, if “teabaggers” is the worst thing they get called, it won’t come close to the inflammatory rhetoric of their own movement.
I went to the rally because I wanted to see for myself what they were saying. Isn’t that better than simply accepting what I hear from others? I have no interest in infringing on their first amendment rights, but I’ll certainly continue to exercise mine and point out just how scary they are. When one of the leaders of their movement refers to the President of the United States as an “Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug” and declares re: the health care bill,
it sounds to me like he’s advocating an uprising. At the very least, this movement seeks to de-legitimize a President elected with a significant majority of the vote. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that he’s the first African-American to win the office and 99%+ of Monday’s crowd was white.
Of course there are kooks on the left too. The difference is they aren’t legitimized by the support of Democratic party leaders. And please don’t tell me this is about opposition to all government growth. The rank and file Shelby County residents who attended Monday’s rally never got any closer to protesting the policies of the Bush administration than sitting on the couch and occasionally, toward the end of his second term, tut-tutting something they heard on Fox News.