THANK YOU INSTAPUNDIT AND WELCOME INSTAPUNDIT READERS! It is always special when we get a platinum link from Glenn’s site. Welcome to the Shrine.
Dear Readers: I have been dialoging with representatives of the local “Coffee Party” chapter who have as Rule #1: “Respect Everyone. Even if we disagree, listen to understand. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Check party affiliations at the door. During this discussion, the Coffee Party peeps kept on referring to the “racist signs” at our Tea Party events.
The Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition (SoCal-TRC), which organized today’s San Diego rallies at the offices of congressional representative Susan Davis and Bob Filner for Operation Urgent Care, has a fairly tight policy of no vulgar/racist signage. We encourage topic-specific materials, such as protesting the Obama administration’s healthcare reform legislation. Personally, I have never seen one.
Have I missed something? I don’t think so, but I wanted to be sure. So, to honor the spirit of this new dialog, I went in quest of “racist” signage at our rally. I needed to investigate this matter further.
Approximately 100 people attended the Operation Urgent Care rally in front of Davis’ University Avenue office. It was a beautiful day, which made up for the last event that will always be referred to as the “Tsunami Tea Party“. I went up and down University Avenue, taking pictures of the signs and inquiring about their inspiration. I will let my readers judge the tenor of these masterpieces.
Here is our intrepid friend, Alvin, signing the largest item on display — an enlargement of the U.C. Constitution. SoCal-TRC wants the US Congress to honor the spirit of this document during passage of the bills. I should think the Coffee Peeps want to follow Constitutional parameters as well. They should be cool with the homage to one of our founding documents.
The lovely and gracious Diane Tovarez had the sign above. She is an office manager and a 25-year resident of San Diego. Asked for the inspiration behind her sign, her reply was: “We need to say NO! We are kidding ourselves if we think this bill can be undone after it passes. We need to stop the bill now, and focus on healthcare reform measures that will really work.”
Married couple, Deborah and Wayne Doyle, had signs that seemingly mock President Obama. Could this be the kind of sign the Coffee Peeps mean? When asked for their inspiration, Deborah replied: “Obamacare is the short-hand way Washington DC and the media use to describe the bill, so that was the basis for these signs”.
So far, so good. Then, I came across this gem, based on feminist precepts:
Taylor Moran, a lifelong San Diego resident and unemployed chemical engineer, said “We need a little humor to get our message across. I am here because, despite the fact he said he was going to pivot and focus on jobs, Obama is trying to thrust a bill that is going to hurt employment prospects for me and other Americans”.
Speaking of feminist precepts, here is a sign based on something said by progressive feminists’ favorite target — Sarah Palin. (Mut Note — I forgot the quote was based on something Obama had originally said — hat-tip/Zeke):
I asked one of the signholders about their inspiration. Janet Oliver, a 65-year resident of San Diego and a Registered Nurse, had this to say: “I can agree with Obama on the concept of reforming healthcare; however, remaking it so the government is intimately involved is not a sound idea.”
When asked what would happen if the House used parliamentary-like procedure to bless the Senate bill and pass it intact, Janet’s compatriot Katherine Williams chimed in: “If they do that, I will never trust my government again. It will create deep seated problems that will be hard to resolve.”
This trio took their inspiration from diverse sources. Clarice Hurst used the Constitution, to remind “Congresswoman Davis that she operates only with the consent of the governed.”. Victor Adams took umbrage with House Speaker Pelosi’s condemnation of Tea Party participants as Nazis, “even though now she changed her tune, I won’t ever forget the insult to me as an American”. His lovely daughter is Sarah; she is a recent UCSD graduate with a communication degree. Sarah noted: “Obama indicated jobs was his new focus. With unemployment neat 10% and over 12% in this state, he should be allowing the congress to work on that!”
The above signs are being held by Ann Matchinske and Alan Goddard, both lifelong residents of San Diego. Ann explained that her pitchfork represented the idea of prodding Congress to the right action: “I couldn’t hold both the torch and the sign, so I left the torch in the car”. Alan recalled taking the sign to the Washington DC Tax Rally, with signatures of many Californians listed on the back: “Seeing that one person carrying one sign actually represented hundreds of other citizens, that was a very powerful message.”
I asked them both how they would feel if the House rammed through the Senate bill: Ann said, “outrage”; Alan noted “disgust.” Alan expanded: “We will begin seeing start of civil disobedience — Americans, for example, won’t buy the mandated insurance package.”
Personally, my favorite sign did mention other countries (if not other races):
Helma Walser, a 27 year resident of San Diego who was born in Germany, worried that “Americans don’t seem to learn history anymore. I can tell you, grand promises of healthcare is the cornerstone of socialism. It doesn’t work”.
The US Constitution and China, blended together, were the inspiration behind this creation:
Signholder Rose Riddle, a 40 year resident of San Diego, says: “We have to stop the bill now. I know it is going to impact Medicaid and seniors will be a target of government healthcare cuts”.
In conclusion: Coffee Peeps can rest assured that no “racist” signage was evident, and that SoCal-TRC event participants kept on message with clever references to the U.S. Constitution, media-approved language, Palin quotes, Pelosi insults, and history. However, there is one sign they may really take exception to:
I talked to Dawn Wildman, President of SoCal-TRC. She indicated that approximately 5000 people were in Washington DC today, walking the halls of the US Congress and interacting with their representatives face-to-face. “It was a great success.”
(Dawn with one of my favorite bloggers, Dean of Beers with Demo!)
As A Democrat, I was interested to hear how it went with the Democratic congressmen today. After all, we are suppose to “leave party affiliations at the door.” Dawn noted, “Many people went specifically to talk to representative Stupak and the other twelve members opposing the abortion language. We wanted to express our total support, and that we had their back no matter what the party affiliation. It went well.”
In the interest of fullness of coverage, here are the other signs I captured:
To end on a humorous note: We had many “honks” of support as part of this event. However, a few people who don’t quite see it our way, shouted a few things. One woman said “I hope you’re rich enough to get healthcare.”
The Tea Party response: To inform our Fellow American she had a car problem and was leaking oil [they were genuinely concerned that the driver was unaware that she had an engine problem – hat-tip/PSD]!
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Mut News and Views:
I am going to feature my blogging hero, The Anchoress, today — she seems to have come off a Lenten internet hiatus. This is a palate cleanser: Stupak as William Wallace – UPDATED
Also, this: US Flag not flying in Haiti Relief Compound?
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A little shout-out to Michigan, from which I fled in 1985. They had over 400 at a Tea Party in Royal Oak, MI — about 3 miles from where I grew up (and at the hospital where I had my appendix removed when I was 10). Click HERE to check out their signs — shockingly, they seem inspired by the same material as ours here in San Diego and not a racist one to be found!
Great write up, and you did it really fast, I would only mention the 3pm 2nd wave that was to attend. Many of us headed to lunch after the rally, but I am unsure if anyone went back for double duty with the 2nd shift from east county.
[…] And here’s a report, with photos, from the San Diego rally. […]
Mr. Obama, open this debate.
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[…] A warm Swill Salute to Temple of Mut. […]
Leslie,
You are awesome. If we manage to kill this monstrosity, you will have played a significant part.
Excellent write-up. Thanks for the plug. Great seeing everybody out there.
Link forthcoming.
Great post. Small point: the “lipstick on a pig” is more accurately an Obama quote, maybe or maybe not in reference to Palin.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Obama_Lipstick_on_a_pig.html
Thank you, I enjoyed reading.
I was at the tsunami tea party (talk about mother nature being against you!) but didn’t make this one.
Love the beers with demo blog also!
Devin, thanks so much for the compliment. Please feel free to stop by and comment on any of the articles at any time.
Dean
Leslie,
Great write up and great work. The lies about racism have to stop, that’s incivility. Good work with all the evidence that we are focused on the issues and race has nothing to do with it. BTW, some people will call everything we do racist, regardless, because they have a lifetime of believing in the “nonrelation between facts and decisions.” I call such people leftists.
I agree. It is high time we put a cork in the whole “racist” b.s.
I think for a long time we’ve felt we are done being called racists…but it’s time to do more about it. Thank you for taking this head on. I expect the OB Rag will address your post in the next 48 hours and find any sign mentioning Obama to be offensive.
Thanks for the plug, Lipstick! And while the ‘ObaMao’ sign, the ‘Red, White, and Screwed’ one with the ‘Socialist’ and ‘Impeach’ stamps on Obama’s face, and the ‘Obamunism’ signs were indeed offensive, nothing posted here is what I would call racist. And that’s awesome if there were no ‘Kick all the Mexicans out’ or Obama-in-whiteface posters present – it’s a lot easier to take your group seriously without those types of goons.
I understand that the ‘Blooming Idiots’ poster is just intended as an insult to anyone who doesn’t agree with you, and while it’s cute and energizes your base to encourage disrespect toward others, does it really win you any followers? On that topic, at the rally last month down by the harbor lots of people haggled me about being a worthless, dope-smoking hippie – my parents didn’t graduate high school until ’69, they’re not even old enough to be hippies. What’s with calling anyone you don’t like a hippie?
A lot of the other signs said things I didn’t like, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re inappropriate, just that they illustrate someone’s viewpoint that’s different from my own. Nothing wrong with that.
Heya Mut – since you invited me on over, I’m hoping to play nice and that my comments aren’t too upsetting…now since this is a health care post, I’m going to re-pose a question from our Rag discussion. You’re supportive of the troops, but anti-health care. However, the VA is the purest form of socialized medicine on the globe today, modeled after the Belvedere system originated in post-WWII Britan, but lacking the private option that even Britons have. So since you don’t want this system or anything even reminiscent of it for the American citizenry, do you support an immediate and complete dismantling of the VA health system? If not, does it feel funny to advocate that a capitalist civilian population be defended by a socialist army?
Last thought on the ‘humorous’ aside at the end of the article – someone says they hope you’re rich so you can afford private health care, you respond by essentially saying “Ha, ha! Not only are you so poor you can’t afford private care, you’re so poor you can’t afford to maintain your car! You don’t have money for things and that’s funny!” That seems more cruel than humorous to me…
PSD: Thank you for responding and crossing over to visit The Shrine. I intend to respond to your inquiry farther — but I want to do so in a thoughtful manner. I would not feel comfortable quoting your posts on this site without your express permission. Therefore, look here next week for a post devoted to it. I will give you a heads-up. I want to spend some time thinking and preparing, out of respect for your kind and cordial posts on the other site. Thank you.
In regards to this last part: “Ha, ha! Not only are you so poor you can’t afford private care, you’re so poor you can’t afford to maintain your car! You don’t have money for things and that’s funny!” I think you need to re-read it. Our participants were really concerned that the driver didn’t know there was an oil leak. They were genuinely being helpful.
Okay, maybe I misinterpreted the humor – someone yells something and you respond with something totally off topic. Could’ve been a had-to-be-there thing…in any case, I would be interested to see your full response, and I understand it sometimes takes a few days to come up with a coherent response to certain challenges. I’ll look forward to your response when you get time to formulate it.
As far as copying and pasting any of my OB Rag commentary, if you’re going to take my responses to someone else’s posts I ask that you re-post your and my comments in their entirety for every discussion string you want to use – leaving out other folks’ comments, of course. If you’re going to use a post for which I was the primary author, I’d prefer you link to the original article. When the Rag takes content in this manner, they’ll usually quote the first 2-3 paragraphs and then force a click-through to the original post to finish reading, so I’d be okay with that…
I will follow your guidelines. Do you have a separate blog, or just post on the OB-Rag?
I don’t maintain an independent site, I’m just an occasional contributor to the Rag, mainly as a financial industry commentator.
Then you are doubly welcome here, as I started this site in my quest to better understand finances and the economy! 🙂
You will find my guest commentator, Professor Athena, is a highly placed executive in a major financial institution. If you look at my blog-roll, you will find that I have listed several excellent sites devoted to business and finance.
Great report! I live in Oceanside, CA and was not able to attend this. Perhaps we could email eachother going forward? I blog at the Left Coast Rebel.
[…] derailed the false charges of racist signs directly in my post covering a recent rally. Now, it seems the elite media is automatically buying the drama-infused […]
Do you have copy writer for so good articles? If so please give me contacts, because this really rocks! 🙂
[…] willy-nilly by the usual suspects. That lead me to do my pictorial essay on Tea Party signs: SIGNS of the TIMES: San Diego Healthcare Rally for Operation Urgent Care, competing disproving the extreme leftists assertions we promoted “racist signs”. I […]