imported post
The crowd in FH was fairly small as these go, probably 100 people or so. I read the one in Northville at the Community Park at Beck/5 Mile had over a thousand with a stage for multiple speakers, including Mike Cox, and also for live music to add fill for the duration.
As far as political philosophy, my sense was that the FH event leaned toward the small government conservative. Among the many anti-tax signs, there were many anti-socialism messages out there. It's a good reminder that there are a LOT of people pissed off at Obama and ObamaCare. The FH event was fairly tame, people holding signs and waving to passing cars. The organizer gave a short talk and then a few of the local politicians said a few words. I was having a conversation on the side at that point and didn't pay them any attention.
For the event populous, I think I think it's a mixture of those who actually believe in reducing the size of the fed.gov and those who are there to just toot their own horns and patting themselves on the back. I'm afraid it's likely that most of these folks will still vote for the same two-headed beast in the next national election, so I don't know wtf they think they're going to accomplish. At least the storm is slowly brewing.
My optimistic impression is that while these events do tend to reinforce ones own sense of purpose, the greater effect may be to draw more of the closet/fence-post sitters out to support some actual redress of grievances in the future. In addition, the sheer number of these things nationwide on the 4th ought to send a message to our state capitals and US reps that the people are starting to get seriously riled up.
I'm glad I went. I was able to break my OC cherry in nearly the most public way possible, got my LEO encounter out of the way, and had a few interesting conversations to boot.
