Apr
16
Tax Day Tea Party . . . My Time in Nashville and Wilson County
April 16, 2009 | Tagged America, Big Government, Glen Beck, Nashville Tea Party, New American Tea Party, Save America, Sean Hannity, State Rights, Tax Day Tea Party, Tennessee | 3 Comments
Yesterday was a great day. I arrived at Legislative Plaza in Downtown Nashville at 11:00 am and the crowd at that time easily matched up to the 600 that we had on 2/27/08. Then by 11:15 am we had over 1,500 people getting ready to protest outrageous government spending and intrusion and support lower taxes. By the time 12:00 pm rolled around the plaza was nearly completely full and we easily had 5,000 people.
There were people everywhere – on the plaza, on the steps of the plaza, along the road on Charlotte Avenue and on the hillside of the Capital Building. When all was said and done, the Capital Police estimated the crowd to be 10,000 people. It was amazing, it was NOT organized by some GOP Organization or by Fox News. Fox News was late to the game and while I love Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, they have not been there from the beginning. They will be the first ones to tell you that when people say they are the ones running this.
We really had no national big name speaker and we still had 10,000 people. There were also hundreds of cars driving down Charlotte Avenue honking their horns. Judson Phillips did a great job organizing the Nashville event and spent hundreds of hours of his personal time helping all the counties of Tennessee organize their own Tax Day Tea Party events. In the end, 50 out of 95 counties had Tea Parties Wednesday. Several counties pooled their resources and had multi-county Tea Parties. The Nashville event lasted a little over one hour and I stayed until about 1:30 pm before getting ready to head to my own county for our Tea Party event.
The Wilson county event started around 4:30 pm with live music, food and several speakers. My great friend Ken Marrero was the MC and he did an excellent job. By the time the Wilson county event started the temperature was about 50 degrees and very cool wind so I thought the turnout would be smaller. Not to mention it was a church night. However, the traffic on Mount Juliet Road was bumper to bumper and I know of some people that did not come because they could not get to Charlie Daniels Park.
The estimated turnout for the Wilson county event was 1,400 people. I am the Vice chairman of the newly formed Wilson County Young Republicans and we had a table there and had several people sign-up to get more information or become members. It was a great day for America and it gave me hope that we can still make a difference and it starts November 2010.
This is not about Democrat or Republican, this is about returning America to a less intrusive government and lower taxes. This is about returning America to its Constitutional Principals. Don’t be fooled by the reports you are reading in the national media about this being a fringe right-wing group that is astro-turfing. I have photos of the events and videos on my Facebook page.
God Bless
American Dad
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