I got back to my hotel around 3:00pm, showered, and uploaded my photos from the morning's shoot. Naturally, I had Mexican food for dinner (from Chipotle, which was overpriced) and then headed over to Diablo. It's a beautiful stadium. The Los Angeles Angels hold spring training there. Here's the scene right at 6:00pm, with crowd estimates at over 5,000 for the whole night:
Griff Jenkins of Fox News was covering the event. A fun guy (and no, I wasn't interviewed, LOL!):
A policeman spoke to this fellow (obscured) with the sign on the left. Not sure why. The guy's wife, in the white t-shirt at the man's right, was unhappy and animated --- and the guy didn't raise the sign again. Can't see the whole thing but perhaps someone complained about political incorrectness? Hard to believe though. Looks like "Send Illegal Immigrants Back to ..." Mexico? Of course, no one complained about the extremist signs of the anarchists, indigenous supremacists, and socialists in downtown Phoenix earlier (indeed, the media was eating that stuff up):
No Mexican flags at the Tempe rally, thank goodness:
Frankly, I was tired from my morning coverage downtown. I decided to just kick back in the stands and enjoy the show, taking in the calm, patriotic atmosphere. Some families took off early, perhaps too tired to stick around for the headliner, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Sometime after 9:00pm, Sheriff Arpaio arrives with his entourage. Down at the third-base dugout, the press swarmed for interviews and photos:
I moved down onto the playing field. Arpaio's a local rock star. He lingered along the fenced enclosure for a half-hour or so, greeting supporters and signing autographs before taking the stage:
I said hello, shook his hand, and thanked him myself. Here at Arpaio's right is L.A. activist Ted Hayes:
Just behind Arpaio here is retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Albert RodrÃguez, the founder of "You Don't Speak for Me!", an anti-amnesty Hispanic-American interest group.
Here's Gina Loudon, founder of the St. Louis Tea Party and creator of the BUYcott campaign. She gave a rousing address, firing up the crowd in support of Arizona and SB 1070:
When the New York Times ran its story on both events on Saturday night, reporter Randal Archibold, filing from Phoenix, misidentified Gina Loudon as "Tina Loudon." To top it off, Archibold implies that SB 1070 backers are racist:
At the rally in favor of the law, which began with the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem, any mention of Mexico or supporters of the law brought lusty boos — a video clip of President Felipe Calderón of Mexico especially fired up the crowd, which was mostly white and middle-aged or older. Placards like “Illegals out of the U.S.A.” were typical, though speaker after speaker ridiculed the idea that the crowd was racist ...
The later rally, at sundown, was organized by Tea Party groups from St. Louis and Dallas who said they decided to take the lead and support the state against a wave of boycotts protesting the law, some by cities like San Francisco and Seattle.
“We are doing this to crush any boycott against the free market,” said Tina Loudon, a Tea Party member from St. Louis who helped organize the rally. “Arizona has a sovereign right to enforce immigration laws on the books.”
Sheriff Arpaio took the stage sometime close to 10:00pm. He was introduced by former "Incredible Hulk" star Lou Ferrigno and his wife Carla:
Arpaio gave a wonderful speech. He's totally no-nonsense:
I got a kick when he waved to the crowd as if to say goodbye, and then continued on for a few minutes:
You can see what I mean at about 8:00 minutes at the clip:
The rest of the evening's videos are available on YouTube. One of the most memorable speeches was from Ted Hayes, pictured above with Sheriff Arpaio. Plus, more pictures at BulletPeople Blog, as well as Barbara Espinosa and Robert Stacy McCain.
And worth another look is the Stand With Arizona promotional video:
On April 27, 2010, I got a job with the United States Census Bureau in New Jersey. With a hidden camera, I caught four Census supervisors encouraging enumerators to falsify information on their time sheets. Over the course of two days of training, I was paid for four hours of work I never did. I was told to take a 70 minute lunch break, was given an hour of travel time to drive 10 minutes, and was told to leave work at 3:30pm. I resigned prior to doing any data collection but confronted Census supervisors who assured me, “no one is going to be auditing that that level,” and “nobody is going to be questioning it except for you.” Another Census supervisor only said he’d adjust my pay after I gave him a letter recanting my hours.
As to whether this is an “isolated incident” or if there are more Census videos showing more waste, fraud, and corruption, we’ll let you take a wild guess.
America, real journalism has been dead for a long time now. With $1500 Hannah Giles and I were able to break a story that the New York Times couldn’t have broken no matter how many times they mortgaged their building. The government took our camera, so I bought another. The government put us in jail and deleted our tapes, but we got out and we’ll just make more. My travel was restricted to the state of New Jersey, so that’s where I got back to work. The media establishment is busy doing character assassinations on my friends and me but time and truth is on our side. [NYT front-page mugshots ... that's just perfect.]
Congress answered to our ACORN videos, now it will be up to the Department of Justice to explain why it edited out of a press release their admission we had no intent to tamper with Senator Landrieu’s phones. More importantly, it will be up to the Census Bureau to explain why their supervisors are systematically falsifying time sheets.
Exposing corruption requires standing up to power, because power hates sunlight. We should have known they would try and ruin the reputations of those who try and expose them. But in response, we are going to build an army of citizen investigators. There’s hundreds more where I came from. You have awakened a sleeping giant. And you can’t ruin us all. In fact, in the coming months you will see this army expanding into every state, every statehouse, every city council, every school board, and everywhere people are conspiring to keep themselves in power, practice favoritism, or line their pockets with tax dollars.
After this weekend's reporting in Arizona, I feel in good company with James O'Keefe. I would just add the press itself to the list of corrupt institutions. I'll credit fair reporting when I see it, but it's to the point where the odds are at least 2-1 that people aren't getting the full story. Citizen journalism is going to save the Republic in the long run.
