This is America coming together. But not really. Tomorrow, there will be an “Occupy Dallas” protest at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, starting at 9 a.m. It’s a spin-off the “Occupy Wall Street” protest ongoing in New York, the rallying cry being: “We are the 99 percent,” as in, not the richest one percent of the population.
But wait, there’s more. Friday, at 6 p.m., there will be another protest at the same place. This one is organized by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and has much more of a Tea-Party tone. They will protest against the Federal government, in favor of “sovereignty and sound monetary policy.” It is, very specifically, not a protest of Wall Street, or a call to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
Which one will be bigger? Well, the Thursday protest has a Facebook page with more than 5,000 “likes” and more than 600 people saying they’ll attend. But Alex Jones has a lot of followers. And his isn’t during regular work hours (even with high unemployment, most people still have jobs). As a conservative friend of mine who plans to attend Friday’s demonstration joked, “I don’t want to protest with a bunch of unemployed hippies!”
Yes, it would be more interesting if these two groups were in the same spot at the same time. It’s not exactly disparate groups coming together. It’s actually two very different parts America coming at separate times. And anybody who’s been in a relationship knows that’s not ideal.
