A very strange rally

[boobooday]

The Freepers held a rally here in Tallahassee. We've been having "Awake the State" rallies, and this is their counter-demonstration.

A very strange series of images. . . are these people paid?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2687249/posts

Here are my shots from one of the rallies from our side:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58957452@N03/sets/72157626019874009/

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Short answer, no, mostly the are not paid

long answer, they are sponsored by front organizations for things like oh the Koch brothers.

[boobooday]

3. Did you look at the group in the photos?

Some of those people did not look to me like they were inspired by political outrage. Seriously. They almost look like they are either infiltrating, or getting paid to take up space.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. As I said, this is astroturf

the groups running these shows, the puppeteers are... very well connected to RW. So the short answer is they are not being paid, not yet... none of us has been able to FIND evidence of this YET.

[Hannah Bell]

19. you didn't look at the picture.

[Drale]

2. Most of them don't seem very excited to be their

except that old lady and that creepy guy at the end.

[boobooday]

5. That lady is scary-looking!

She reminds me of my grandmother, who used to hit me with a flyswatter all the time.

[csziggy]

15. That old lady did not like sitting between those black men!

She was all clenched down to make sure she did not touch either of them.

I wouldn't be surprised if the African Americans in that group had been paid. Maybe they were just hanging out and the Tea Party people offered them bucks to pose for the pictures.

[Atman]

4. I love the sign in the last pic...they're very passive protestors...

Whereas we Dems during the Bush years demanded that we "TAKE BACK AMERICA," this woman is asking that we give her back America. Like, retty please? I don't actually want to have to fight for it or anything.

[Ian David]

6. Where did the Freepers find so many people of color? My guess is they're hired from LaborReady. n/t

[boobooday]

13. I really think you're right. n/t

[cliffordu]

8. half of those photos have the yellow signs photoshopped in.

Look at the clairity of the sign edges as opposed to the edges of the people. Lots of the signs seem to be held up by absolutely nothing.

They are morons to try to pass these off as real.

[aquart]

11. Look again. The signs have very fancy black plastic holders.

Never seen anything like them.

[cliffordu]

17. Lawn darts?

you are correct. Seeing shit on my iphone is difficult.

[lob1]

9. Those people are not Freepers.

There's not a misspelled sign in the bunch.

[aquart]

10. They sat the black people up front without signs.

Yah. Really odd. From the printed signs to the sitting to ...just not normal.

[boobooday]

14. I wish I would have known ahead of time

I would have gone down there with my camera and talked to some of those people. Some of the people without signs look like they are about to wink at the camera.

[JuniperLea]

12. Well, you can't even compare the two!

One is lethargic and few, the other peppy and numerous!

I like that!

[ET Awful]

16. It looks like the black guys were just hanging out and got surrounded by Freepers with signs.

Notice that not one black person is holding a sign and none of them look the least bit happy.

[snagglepuss]

18. That is strange. It definitely looks like they have paid a number of them to participate.

It'd be interesting if someone tracked some of them and asked them.