Uni-Tea

Scenes From Tea Party Diversity Day And The Multi-Racial Crowd That Never Was (VIDEOS)

Jillian Rayfield | August 2, 2010, 5:57PM

On Saturday, TPM attended the Uni-Tea rally in Philadelphia, with the hopes of witnessing the most diverse Tea Party rally ever.

Unfortunately, the mostly white gathering left us with crushed hopes and broken dreams, though we did manage to capture some good video of Tea Partiers trying their darndest to rally the multi-racial crowd that never was...

[TPM SLIDESHOW: Uni-Tease: Scenes From The Tea Party's Failed Diversity Day]

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Uni-Tea

Diversity Is In The Eye Of The Beholder: A Day At Uni-Tea

Evan McMorris-Santoro and Jillian Rayfield | July 31, 2010, 8:50PM

It was billed as the most diverse tea party rally ever. For three hours Saturday afternoon, we waited for the diversity to show up.

Was Saturday's Uni-Tea rally in Philadelphia a success? Well, it depends on your definition of "epic fail." If you're more on the defensive end of the tea party spectrum, you would have left the rally this afternoon even more convinced that the movement is not now about race and never has been. If you're the kind of tea partier who'd like to see that abounding not-racism result in some actual demographic diversity in the movement, the Uni-Tea rally appeared to be a borderline disaster.

For three hours, a small crowd drifted in and out of Independence Park as speakers and musicians regaled them with paranoia about Democratic politicians and policies and reassurances that no matter what anyone says, there's no racism in the tea party.

Even as just a regular old tea party rally, the event fell flat. Though organizers said the event's website had been visited more than 2 million times in the days leading up to today's rally outside Independence Hall, for most of the afternoon there were fewer than 500 in attendance. It was clear from the large numbers of volunteers and the 1,500 bottles the organizers put on ice that they expected a big crowd to turn out. They did not get it by a long shot. They blamed a traffic jam on I-95 for keeping people away (for the record one organizer said that she counted 1,500 on the high end of attendance, but that appeared a bit generous to us).

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Andrew Breitbart

Breitbart Ducks Questions About Sherrod At Uni-Tea

Evan McMorris-Santoro and Jillian Rayfield | July 31, 2010, 4:07PM

The Tea Party's Uni-Tea rally in Philadelphia today marked Andrew Breitbart's first public speech since Shirley Sherrod's firing from the USDA, but Breitbart ducked TPM's questions about the incident, and didn't bring it up at all in his 20-minute long speech.

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Tea Party

Preview: Today Is Tea Party Diversity Day -- Featuring Andrew Breitbart

Evan McMorris-Santoro | July 31, 2010, 9:23AM

Andrew Breitbart

Andrew Breitbart, the man who helped get Shirley Sherrod fired from the Department of Agriculture, will be among the voices tea party leaders rely on to reach out to minorities at a special rally in Philadelphia today. "Uni-Tea" kicks off this afternoon with speeches from several prominent African American conservatives as well as the trouble-making founder of Breitbart.com and BigGovernment.

Event co-organizer Jeffrey Weingarten, a tea partier from Morristown, NJ, told TPM yesterday he expects the event to draw crowds of multi-ethnic faces not generally seen at normal tea party events. The goal of the rally is to show off the movement's diversity on stage while drawing demographics not usually associated with the tea party into the movement.

"I hope people will be surprised," Weingarten said. "From our point of view, if there was just one other than white face [in the crowd] it would be surprising. From the point of view of the outside, a decent percentage of other than white faces would be a surprise also."

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