DAYTON TEA PARTY Rally, April 13, 2010

Bus Trip Report
This report is furnished a day late because of the desire to be objective and the inability to express the emotional excess felt immediately after the event. Remember the old question, I have some good news and some bad news, what do you want to hear first??

Well the GOOD NEWS has many facets so let us start with 1. The bus capacity is fifty seven and we had fifty one patriots sign up for the trip, 2. The bus was clean as a whistle and the driver/owner was courteous and considerate, 3. The brief trip to the NUTTER CENTER was comfortable and filled with the effort by virtually all the folks to create individual 11” X 17” signs to show off at the event, 4. Arrival at the NUTTER CENTER occurred almost exactly on schedule at 3:45 P.M., and 5. Pictures were taken of all the folks with the bus as the background.

Now for some surprising BAD NEWS: 1. Although the information upon which the Bus schedule was based said that the doors would open at 4:00 P.M., access to the center was denied until approximately 4:35 because a facility sweep was in progress, [no mention of a bomb threat has been observed in any media after the event], 2. At the door closest to the bus parking space (Gate #3) we were advised that the following items were prohibited from the event: NO SIGNS, NO FLAGS, NO WATER OR FOOD OF ANY KIND, NO VIDEO CAMERAS, NO POINTED ITEMS, NO KNIVES, NO GUNS, ETC. ETC. [OUR SIGNS, FLAGS AND WATER BOTTLES WERE RETURNED TO THE BUS], 3. It was discovered later, during the event, that little DON’T TREAD ON ME FLAGS on pointed sticks were sold in the Arena. And, someone had a 3’ X 5’ American Flag and waved it conspicuously at stage front right, 4. When access was granted, no one in the Arena knew location of the section reserved for the DARKE T.E.A. PATRIOTS, 5. The fact that an elevator was available in the area behind the stage was not made known to our group until after the program had started. The climb from our assigned area was a challenge and did represent an unplanned obstacle for some of our senior citizens to go to the rest room and/or get a bite to eat.

THE MAIN EVENT: scheduled start at 6:45 – actual finish at 10:18 (3 HOURS AND 33 MINUTES) listed eighteen items but not included in this total were the music interludes. The variety of speakers and the diversity of presentations clearly demonstrated significant effort by the organizers of the event and should be enthusiastically applauded. The beginning of the MAIN EVENT was especially emotional for any PATRIOT. The orderly approach of two fully dressed bag pipers to the stage in preparation for the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a heartfelt reading of the last verse of the National Anthem and then a beautiful rendition of the Anthem created an appropriate focused foundation for the speakers for the evening.

The fourteen speakers were all good. The truly outstanding presentations, in my opinion, were given by Jim Jordan, Apostle Claver Kamau-Imari, Kimberly Fletcher and Bill Federer. It would appear that the organizers saved the best for last because C.L. Bryant and Alan Keyes simply knocked a hole in the sky of enthusiasm and audience participation.

The event was extremely well done. The moment when Rob Scott strongly instructed someone that the DAYTON TEA PARTY is a patriotic organization and does not and will not participate in any way in racial slurs so do not imply that it does was very meaningful and apparently overlooked or at least not reported in the media. Strictly as an aside, the fact that of the six speakers that received special recognition in this text, only three were white and this has not previously been stated in the media, is something to think about. The original DAYTON TEA PARTY event on April 15, 2009 was outstanding and although this event was a bit long in comparison, this must be considered a success. Thank you from a group of patriots from Greenville.

Al Bliss

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