There was a Tea Party rally today at the local IRS building in Phoenix. I decided to go take a look, all the while telling myself to be as objective as possible in listening to what they had to say. Going to rallies sponsored by polarizing groups, be they Tea Party, Second Amendment advocates and even Occupy folks can be a bit tricky for me to attend. I try not to make an assumption in talking to the people at rallies, but as soon as they get an inkling I’m with the press, their biases pop up. Now, seeing things from their side, the press doesn’t treat political advocacy groups with an even hand. It would be easy to blame the field reporters that the groups see firsthand, but if you think about it, by the time the footage has been passed along to producers, editors and others that get the package together and then try to cram all that information into a 30 second blurb, the more passionate of the group members are going to be the ones who will hit the screen, not the calm rational ones. It’s tough to ask people to take you seriously when you are represented by a guy dressed up in Revolutionary War garb with glasses.

I got to the Tea Party rally around 12:15pm. There was a good sized crowd at the corner and probably close to 75 people were in attendance. I walked through the crowd, listening to them shout anti-IRS and anti-Obama slogans. I saw a couple and one of them in an Obama mask. I took a few pictures of them and a woman came over and asked if I wanted her to take a picture of me. I knew in a roundabout way she was trying to see if I was a reporter so I told her I was. She wanted to know who I was with and I handed her my card for Chaotic Fringe. After we talked a bit and I established myself, we talked about why the group was there. There were lots of grievances they had about the government, the Obama administration in particular, and the worry that the country was turning into a totalitarian state.

If I was doing a sit down interview I might have asked her a lot more questions about her position on a number of issues. A few moments later I talked to the one of the organizers of the local Tea Party group. He echoed the same things the first woman talked about and he was able to give me a little more insight into his point of view about the Tea Party. After a few minutes of talking, he said he was more of an Independent as far as politics go, and because we talked for so long, close to 15 minutes, I got the impression he was very willing to listen to opposing points of view. The first woman I talked to she was definitely Republican, but like the gentleman, she was someone who was willing to have a conversation with someone who might be on the opposite end of the political spectrum. What I got from listening to those two people was a sense that if you didn’t come into the discussion hell bent on making points, you might find common ground with the rational Tea Party members.

OK, while I was talking to both of those people, there were people surrounding me getting reactions from people driving by. Mostly, people honked their horns in support. A few people, not happy with the anti-Obama rhetoric, shouted back. To my surprise, there was no outright hateful dialog from either side. It was definitely a civil demonstration with people exercising their right to free speech. I must say I talked to two other people who weren’t calm and rational in their discussion. They both thought Obama was evil, not a God fearing man, and the Democrats were his army that was going to destroy the moral touchstone of the nation. I was disturbed by one person I talked to. We got off on an interesting foot and I didn’t know why the conversation went so off the wall. I was chalking it up to him being a Tea party zealot. After he got comfortable with me and was assured by one of his friends, who had heard me talking with someone else, that I was OK, he laughed a little and gave me his views about the government. In the middle of the conversation he explained why he was a bit leery of me. He said he had seen me wandering through the crowd earlier. He figured I was a reporter because of my camera. He told me he joked with the crowd around him wondering what size pressure cooker I was carrying in my backpack. Apparently it got a lot of people laughing and I have to say I remember people laughing when I was interviewing the first woman.

I don’t know if that laughter is because of me but that humor, if you want to call it that, is what gets people understandably leery of talking to Tea Party people. Just after I arrived, more press crews showed up and there was a man who came up to the woman I was talking to and asked if they had any spokespeople to talk to the press. He was concerned that one of the ‘crazy folks’ might talk on the air. I would say a good portion of the people at the rally were just regular people exercising their Freedom of Speech. They weren’t throwing hate bombs, even in their dislike of Obama, the signs and slogans they shouted weren’t out of the norm. There were a few, however, that had the potential of crossing the line but it didn’t happen. I believe what kept the peace at the rally was the simple fact it was organized for a Tuesday at noon and the organization was done rather quickly. There wasn’t time for any opposition to come down. When I got off the light rail and was waiting for the light to turn, I heard someone who was watching the crowd across the street ask someone what was the protest about. The other person had no idea.

For more and larger pictures of the event, please click HERE to go to my Flickr page.