My office window overlooks quite a bit of an area scheduled for one. I went mostly to observe humanity in mass, and just see what happened. The inviolable dictum is "Avoid crowds." So I was watching from my office window.
I can't see the entire area from my window, and just happened to be overlooking the black lives matter table at the SE corner. More stuff going on on the stage at the NW corner.
My buddy estimated 400, but I estimate more like 800-1000 at the peak.
Lots of haranguing through loudspeakers from the stage. I'd guess it was >80% brainless useful idiots.
Interestingly, they said the pledge of allegiance and sang the Star Spangled Banner. That seemed counter intuitive to me based on what I thought most of their views were on America and such.
Lots of signs about gun control, while they failed to realize that Parkwood (or whatever the name was) was entirely about government failing to do its job and round up the shooter before he became a shooter.
Lots of old ladies holding signs.
BLM working hard to make it about them, even though, I don't think any black kids died at Parkwood.
The BLM group was quite instructive to watch. They had a leader in heavy work boots that have probably never been involved in work (he looked very flabby and soft). Two guys who I think were security. Add in several angry black youth. Some white, colored-hair gay fellows (they were kissing earlier), some white lesbians (ditto, plus lots of hand holding), and one ineffectual looking white doofus male.
There was a small group with Gadsden flags, the one guy open carrying.
BLM sent the fat, angry white ladies and doofus to try to provoke the Gadsden people. Then they sent over the middle-aged hysterical lefty woman to try harder to provoke. They'd previously given doofus a large BLM flag to fly right by the Gadsden folks. He kept walking back over to the BLM table for instructions, it looked like.
Gadsden people were polite and not getting ruffled. Eventually, hysterical woman lost it and started screaming obscenities we could hear over the noise from the stage.
THEN, Boots (the leader) goes over to calm them down and demonstrate his rational restraint (I believe in part because he saw the cops edging over).
And, they had the "security" guys (think menacing-looking thugs) standing perimeter about 5 yards away. Security guys were being quiet and relatively still, but quite attentive.
So, I think what they were doing was using the white useful idiots to take the risks - maybe provoking violence, maybe getting arrested - while they staid back and manipulated.
One of the black lives matter security people eventually saw us watching them through binoculars, so he waved at me. I waved back. He grinned, then began pointing me out to others who also waved. I waved. Friendly Weetabix. I'm not convinced they were as friendly as they meant to appear.
No violence, no angry confrontation that I saw at the event except from hysterical woman. I think she blew a gasket in typical lefty fashion when she couldn't get them to say she was right and they probably responded rationally.
It was just interesting. BLM trying to make it about them and manipulating the useful idiots to try to provoke a confrontation. Gun rights people behaving and responding rationally.
But... do you think any lefty there saw that and changed what they think? Hollow laugh.
My mother-in-law was there with her sister. MIL had much more energy to march around in solidarity with brainless zombies than Auntie did. I only saw that Auntie made one circuit of the march, but MIL made several. I may not be able to resist asking her about it next time she's here.
I was listening to the scanner to see who else was watching and on what frequencies. The local PD Tac frequency had a bit of chatter, but not much. They spotted open carry guy coming in from a direction I couldn't see. That helped us spot him earlier. Other than that, they were pretty quiet. Though I did see a lot of PD on cell phones. I had a Baofeng set up as a "bubba scanner" for all the bubble pack radio frequencies. Didn't hear a thing on that. That surprised me. I'd bet they were using social media to coordinate.
Endless opportunities for hilarious trolling at something like this. But... Avoid crowds.
My son said, "I want to join the Lefty’s protest sometime (posing), and then conspicuously convert over to rational, right opinions after a few minutes of hysterical conversation with them. Just to make the liberals all ruffled up in their righteous feathers."
My missed opportunity: It would have been hilarious to have gone out the night before and put up small markers that said something like “200 yards, hold 1 inch high” with wind flags on top. Just to see if anyone noticed.
