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 boderline disaster.
And a crowd well-below estimates...a couple hundred or so...
Among those who did make it, for most of the time the numbers of non-white faces could be counted on two hands, and maybe a foot.
The same can't be said for the group who went up on the event's small stage, so the small crowd listened to a variety of ringers and this...which certainly could not have done much but driven away any borderline crazy:
Uni-Tea reached out the hand of tea party acceptance to young people, too -- in the form of white conservative rapper Hi-Caliber and a band of veterans called The Bangers. "This reaches out to the 18-34 year-olds," organizer Jeffrey Weingarten said. It should be noted that Weingarten was successful in getting at least one 18-34 year-old to join him for the day: his son, Freedom Weingarten.
Freedom, undoubtedly and unironically, was compelled to attend.