St. Louis Tea Part protesters in front of SEIU office argue with counter-protesters

SEIU headquarters in St. Louis was the scene yesterday of a demonstration by Tea baggers. A little hot weatherwise in St. Louis at noon, but these folks were out in force.

Tea Party folks got out a couple hundred protesters. SEIU got out a handful it appears with most of the counterdemonstrators coming from the liberal West End neighbors (looked like some Washington University folks, some whom live in neighborhood).

Sad about the SEIU and others, I warned them late Friday afternoon myself and left word with several folks. Guess no one in the offices when I left messages. Even sadder, no one appears to have organized a counter demonstration, fully knowing these teabaggers would respond to events of Thursday eveining . On the vids, one of the speakers ask "Where are they At?"; a valid question.

West end area is very liberal and from looking at the varied vids, these counter-demonstrators are the folks of the community; not SEIU folks. Speculation on my part.

In any case, Tea Party organized 200 or so folks in less than 24 hours to demonstrate with full press coverage (and folks posting vids on youtube and other sites). That is better than many union/social agency organizations can do and personally speaking, hats off to them for that feat of organizing.

SEIU is the largest union in the US with over 2 million members. They are part of the Change to Win (as opposed to the AFL-CIO). Teabaggers hitting SEIU headquarters with protests was a clever move on the Teabaggers for a variety of reasons. Will go over some of this politics next meeting if folks wish.

Note: After Obama victory many unions and other dismantled "rapid response" type systems. Perhaps this incident will cause a few to rebuild those response organizations.



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note: Tea Bagger's blog again is at: http://stlouisteaparty.com/

They are proclaimning a victory that one of the Senator's townhalls have been cancelled. At their calender site, they list another of Claire's townhalls; targeted for demonstration tuesday.
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