The crowd assembled in front of City Hall…

…and marched to the Federal Building…

…where they cheered on various speakers.

I went to the rally from a war tax resistance educational demo at Glen Park BART the same morning, but didn’t find any other local war tax resisters there. One apparently did show up, but we never ran in to each other even in the fairly small crowd.

So there I was, with my “War Tax Resisters Aren’t Buying It” / “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is” sandwich board, and the looks I’m getting are giving me the vibe of: “Is he from the bride’s family? the groom’s family? does anyone know this guy?”

A few people came up to talk with me. I didn’t get any hostility at all, mostly just curiosity. I told them what I was about, how I thought that war tax resisters might have something to teach that Tea Partiers might be eager to learn, and typically got a “hmmm” & a nod. One fellow shared a good conversation with me about the prospects for tax resistance in the paleoconservative set and whether as the country goes further to hell there’ll be any chance of the left-grassroots and the right-grassroots realizing that they have a common enemy in the politicians who are robbing them blind and telling them to blame it on each other.

The Party was dominated by the Fox News demographic, and the speakers tossed them the expected anti-Obama, anti-Pelosi red meat. To a large extent, many are eager to swallow what their manipulators are eager to dish out. But there were other folks there as well: some folks peddling Obama conspiracy theories of one variety or another, “show me the law”-style tax protesters, and even some radical anti-capitalist critics of the economic crisis & bailout.

There was a sizeable libertarian contingent — which you might expect, given the anti-tax, anti-government-spending focus. But other libertarians have been skeptical of the Tea Party phenomenon, and at least one went from being an organizer to deciding to sit it out as the event became captured by opportunistic Republican politicians.

A group of about a half-dozen very white punk rock kids, calling themselves “Anti-Racist Action” had somehow gotten it into their heads that the Tea Party was going to be a rally for the anti-immigrant “Minutemen” group. So they were there to counter-protest with a couple of signs reading “Smash the Minuteklan” or some such. I may have been the only person who noticed. In any case, I saw a single sign complaining about the burden illegal immigrants place on taxpayers, but otherwise no sign of an organized “Minutemen” presence.

How did it compare with our local anti-war rallies, like that last ANSWER fiasco I went to?

Well… compare and contrast. On the contrast side, the Tea Partiers not only recited the pledge of allegiance, but they sang the national anthem and God Bless America… no Jackson Browne whatsoever. I also saw no giant puppets.

On the compare side:

• There was at least one “hey ho” chant (“hey ho, BHO, keep your hands off our kids’ dough”).
• There was a remarkably caucasian-leaning demographic. I could have probably counted the number of non-white faces on one hand.
• There was widespread disappointment at the turn-out, combined with wishful inflation of the count estimate and the assumption that the media would under-count the rally. (If I had to guess, I’d say there were 500-750 people.)
• Authoritarian fringe parties were overrepresented among the speakers, who often deviated from the rally agenda to raise pet issues (at ANSWER rallies, these are usually various permutations of People’s Socialist Mumiaist Worker’s Party, at the Tea Party it was the Republicans, who, in San Francisco anyway, qualify as a fringe party.)
• There were upside-down flags, protest signs written on cardboard with markers, and calls for impeachment.

The protest signs had a familiar ring to them.

Although the turn-out from our local war tax resistance crew was slim, at least one war tax resister elsewhere braved the Tea Party. Heather Snow got frustrated by handing out flyers at the post office and decided to take a look at the Tea Party in her neck of the woods. She was unimpressed. She tried to do some direct outreach (whereas I just sort of passively used my sandwich board), and found an unreceptive, if not hostile, audience.

Myself, I’m not sorry I went, though I’m hard-pressed to point out anything much that made a difference to my cause or theirs.