Atlanta Tea Party

So, we headed downtown to join the Atlanta Tea Party protest. I describe myself as libertarian/fiscally conservative, and libertarian/socially liberal. I'm also a huge capitalist and free market champion. Thus, the incredible deficits run up by the Bush and Obama administrations, the eviscerating of the AIG employment contracts, the refusal to let the car companies declare bankruptcy, the "too big to fail" mentality, the "firing" of the head of GM- these are all reasons to protest, in my mind. Add in the tax increases, which almost inevitably will affect my family (we paid a ridiculous amount of money in income taxes last year, plus Social Security, which I would opt out of if I could because no way am I seeing any of that money back, sucked dry by the ever longer-living Baby Boomer generation), and I was moved to add my body to the crowd. I'm not a chanter. I'm not a sign maker. But I wanted to be there and be counted. Both parties disgust me right now. There is no one in the political landscape who represents me, and hasn't been for a very long time.

Am I skeptical about the effects of the various protests yesterday? Yes, but mostly because I am convinced that nothing less than voting politicians out of office gets them to pay attention to the people they supposedly represent. And then it's sort of too late, right? Because you only swap one bum for another.

Cynical? Maybe just a little.

Anyway, we got there at about 7:30, and this was the scene in the little area we were in:



We were crushed between a fence and a fire truck, so we backed out of that mob pretty quickly and went to the other side of the Capitol. There was plenty of room on that side, though we couldn't see the Jumbotron because of all the signage in the way. We listened to the speakers and people watched. At one point we went to the picnic area behind the church that was across the street from the Capitol so I could feed Phoebe. My only real complaint about the whole night was that it was pretty darn cold. I had Phoebe in the Bjorn strapped to me, so she was pretty warm, and she helped keep me warm, but the wind was still quite biting.

Anyway, despite the enormous crowd (someone on the stage estimated 20,000 people- I have no idea if that is right and haven't seen any other estimates today, though I could easily believe it- I could also easily believe that it was far, far smaller than that as well), everyone was very well behaved, even the few folks I saw wearing lots of Obama gear (while I personally am furious at both parties, there is no doubt that the movement as a whole is more generally conservative, so assuming someone with an Obama T-shirt, hat and buttons is a counterprotester is a safe one, I think) or heard espousing different viewpoints.

We stayed through the first segment of Sean Hannity's show (I cannot stand that man-such a blowhard!) and then walked back to MARTA to go home. Our feet were killing us, and I was fortunate that a whole bunch of people got off at the first stop and I was able to get a seat. It was during the course of the evening that I noticed that I had abdominal pain that was getting worse and not going away. More on that in the next post.

So that was my first protest experience- pretty low key. If you didn't see the signs, you would have thought you were at any other large festival. It was definitely a party sort of atmosphere. I'm not sure I'll continue to protest (see above re: cynicism), but it felt good to be doing something, no matter how ultimately ineffective. It felt like being an active political citizen, which was cool. I mean, I've always voted, but this went beyond just voting. Corny as it sounds, I felt like a patriot.