Huntsville Alabama Tax Day Tea Party - Part II

First, some number crunching, for anyone who likes numbers.

The final attendance estimates I'm getting for the Huntsville, AL event were about 2300-2500.

For comparison purposes, that's about 1.4% of the city of Huntsville's population, though many participants came from the surrounding area rather than Huntsville proper.

Pajamas TV is estimating total turnout for the nationwide protests at over 578,000 people.
For Alabama, total participation was estimated at about 12,000.

So a slightly better than proportional turnout, since Alabama represents 1.6% of the nation's population, and contributed 2% of the tea party attendance with 18 events.
(New York, by comparison, with 6.5% of the nation's population, contributed just 3.3% of the total event attendance, with 33 events, while Texas, with 8.2% of the the nation's population, contributed 12.4% of the total event attendance, with 78 events. But more on Texas later.)

Note: They estimated Huntsville's attendance numbers at 3000, about 500 more than police estimates, so some optimistic rounding up may have occurred. However, by the same token, many events may have been low-balled by official counts, depending on the politics involved, so it's really hard to say.

In any case, at least half a million Americans showed up on April 15th to make their voices heard, many for the first time in their lives.

High-level reactions to the events were varied, including:
Crude and sophomoric
Clueless
Opportunistic
Hypothetically Seccessionary

CNN and MSNBC showed their true colors as crude, sarcastic, out-of-touch elites who neither have any idea of what they are talking about, nor of what normal Americans think about anything.
FOX, meanwhile, was basically along for the ride, defaulting to be the only network that gave the events positive coverage, and earning massive rating boosts as a result.

Republicans generally tried to co-opt the events as supportive, but received mixed results.
Even in Alabama, where for conservatives the Republican party has for years now been seen as the force of good in Washington battling the evil Democrats, opportunistic Republican attempts to channel the events into support for their own campaigns foundered.

One of the more interesting moments at the Huntsville event was when a Republican candidate had been speaking about kicking the current group of politicians out of power (loud cheers), and then expressed his hope that everyone would support his upcoming reelection campaign. (a few weak cheers, deafening silence)

That gave me hope more than most other things I saw. Once people realize that it's not a question of a good party vs. a bad party, but of an entrenched, damaging bureaucracy in which two largely similar parties share power and unelected officials pull the important strings, we might see some effective action taken.

To all the Americans that took time out of their schedules and showed up on Wednesday, and especially to those for whom it was the first time, we salute you. You have earned the right to protest, by acting on your principles.

In a sense, you are learning what it truly means to be a self-governing American citizen, and it is in you that any hopes of stemming the dark tide of government encroachment remain.

Let us draw together in the days ahead, for in the words of Benjamin Franklin:
"We must all hang together, gentlemen... else, we shall most assuredly hang separately"

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Huntsville Alabama Tax Day Tea Party - Part I

Today, all over America, concerned citizens gathered together to protest uncontrolled spending and general encroachment by Washington. I was present at the Huntsville, AL rally, and I can say that it was quite another thing from the small but lively band that gathered in Decatur. Even before I got off the highway, cars were backed up. People parked all along the street for over a mile down the road.

By the time I had walked to the event itself, there was already a crowd of probably three hundred. This grew steadily to a maximum of what I would guess to be around 800-1000 people. (estimated attendance will be forthcoming eventually, as some local media was present, but anything lower than 750 is an attempt to lowball the figure; the crowd was quite large and densely packed)

The speakers did mostly well. Dale Jackson was present, and of course did an excellent job getting everyone fired up. He and other speakers made numerous comments about our being "domestic terrorists", a reference to the DHS report featured in my previous entry below.

Things began to wind down when an interesting but longish discussion on the Fair Tax was plagued with technical difficulties. I am all for the Fair Tax, and for promoting it, but this was perhaps not the best venue to go into more than a brief summary.

However, everything got back on track, and ended with the recitation of the pledge of allegiance, and a rousing USA chant.

All in all, I was pleased to see the turnout, considering the unfortunately low attendance in Decatur previously. Alabama is not densely populated, so massive crowds tend to require attendance drawing from more than one county. Huntsville is something of a regional center for most of northern Alabama, however, and the event drew people from the surrounding areas. I recognized some people from that earlier Decatur rally as well.

It was a good day, and a good event. In the grand scheme of things, however, it must merely be the beginning of something greater to have any lasting effect.

I will post another article with more information soon, also hopefully with a link to some video of the event, and some commentary on the news coverage.

UPDATE: It turns out I am indeed a conservative, including when it comes to estimating crowds. Huntsville Police are estimating the crowd at 2300 people.

UPDATE 2: WHNT has a great picture of the Huntsville crowd from a better vantage point than I could reach. They also have a couple of pictures from the Dekalb county protest. More pictures may be forthcoming later.

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