Posted by
Catmman on Thursday, April 16, 2009 9:47:21 AM
Rounds Out! was in attendance yesterday at the San Antonio Tea Party. I will put up a more in depth post with numerous photos and hopefully some video highlights as well. Until then, here's an quick shot, down and dirty intial assessment of the events:
The San Antonio Police Department estimate of attendance numbers were 16,000. That's a lot of people! I have never been to any event (barring a professional sports game) where the numbers were this high.
Another observation. I talked about this last night with my wife and oldest daughter: people were nice. They were polite. They were helpful. A lot of people attending the event were giving out materials - bumper stickers, buttons, DVD's, US Flags - for FREE! I have seen many videos of leftist "protests" and marches and there is always someone who has to get stupid and start throwing things, yelling and screaming at ANYONE with a divergent position, out-and-out fights break out. I saw none of this yesterday. At this point, I'm still compiling info and need to read some more about the event from media sources and others, but nothing I've seen so far from the local news had any reports of "violence". You can be sure that if there was any, it would be all over the news. So much for that DHS report on us "right wing extremists", huh?
The format and organization was awesome considering the short time frame the organizers had to set this up. From what I understand, the organizers put this togehter in just six or seven weeks - that's a logistical miracle all things condidered. The speakers/presenters were very good overall. There were a few issues with two of the speakers which I'll elaborate on in the detailed post.
When the event was over, people cleaned up after themselves. We were asked to by an event participant, but it just showed the spirit of the people in attendance. Remember "Earth Day" last year when some tens of millions of tons of trash were left on the ground and the event area was trashed? Um, that doesn't happen with responsible citizens. I'm just sayin...
The weather was awesome!
As far as I could see, there were only two "counter-protesters" in attendance. They weren't really "counter" anything, they were simply Obama supporters. They were polite and engaging. The few people I witnessed speaking with them from the crowd were also polite and respectful. I saw one anti-war sign, but no anti-war, Code Pink ANSWER wackos were there as far as I could tell.
Ted Nugent is an awesome speaker and musician.! He also like to hunt deer apparently... : )
The rally was impressive and enjoyable.
There will be more to follow in the next couple of days. I've gotta get the photos together (hopefully the video will come out ok), and get the photo essay post together. More to come...