'YOU GOT THE WRONG SYMBOL, BOY!' VIDEO OF TEABAGGER HOUNDING STREET VENDORS OUT OF DC 'TEA PARTY' RALLY RAISES QUESTIONS

On the face of it, it’s a video of a white man harassing a group of black kids out of a rally many feel had racist leanings. But the man says that the kids were from ACORN, a group he says is especially hostile to the agenda of the Sept. 12 “Tea Party” in Washington, DC. And he, Tim Jones was someone who didn’t want people from ACORN trying to disrupt or in this case selling flags to the assembled to raise money for their group, so he took it upon himself to make them leave. But then we add to this the fact that ACORN says they never sent anyone to the “Tea Party” rally, and in fact aren’t in the business of sending people out there as vendors. This is a concern that has been raised over the past week, but Jones doesn’t feel inclined to defend himself or for that matter make all that much of a presence since the video came out, and the person who shot the video is being dodgy trying to cry about our link to Max Blumenthal and telling us to “piss off”. So with the credibility of both the cameraman and Jones himself in question, we have to assume with no other evidence saying otherwise, that these kids were not part of ACORN. And if we take that particular item out of the equation, what are we left with? A video of a lying white man harassing a group of black kids out of a rally many feel had racist leanings. Read on.

One People’s Project

WASHINGTON—In the days after the so-called “Tea Party” held on Sept. 12, Tim Jones became somewhat of an internet hero for some in the right. That is due to a video of him taking on who he says were a few members of ACORN as they went into the rally area and attempted to sell the yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” flags. According to Jones in the video, the African American vendors told a police officer that they were members of the organization that advocates for the poor. Sadly, ACORN has become a bogeyman of sorts for the right over the past year not just because of misconduct of some employees caught on video, but mostly because President Barack Obama used to work as a lawyer for them and some conservative activists see it as a good way to go after him.

Jones says the police officer told them to leave, but they doubled back and entered the rally at another point to continue selling the flags. That’s when he proceeded to harass them out of the rally, telling everyone they are from ACORN and that no one should buy their flags as the money will go to the organization. Things became tense in one particular spot when an older woman came between Jones and other protestors warning them not to put their hands on the vendors, letting them know that they were kids. Jones was not deterred, even telling the one male among the group regarding the flags, “You got the wrong symbol here, boy!” After almost ten minutes of the harassment, they left the area as Jones proclaimed victory. “The truth caused them to leave finally,” he said. “The truth can win out if we stand with the truth!”

The video has over 50,000 hits in one week of its posting on YouTube. A number of right-wing, anti-Obama blogs and websites have posted it, many of them calling Tim Jones a hero. Mark Levin posts the video on his Facebook page calling Jones an “American Patriot” and posting his email address so people can thank him. Some posters on Free Republic have attempted to change the adult vendor warning to the protesters of “He’s just a kid!” to her defending Obama by saying, “He is our King!” Of course, the racism comes out in several occasions. On the LiveLeak posting of the video, one person commented, “LOL @ whoever thought sending ghetto mamas to a conservative rally was a good idea.” A MySpace blog entry on the page for something called “ExposetheLiberals” titled “Black Acorn members walk around trying to sell a flag they hate 2 patriots 2 gain profit” went further, complaining about how these were the only black people he saw at the rally, and attacked black people for staying away. “With 1.5 million patriots I mean I would of expected to see at least few thousand blacks I mean they do live in and partake in this country of America! Do they hate America that much?” the poster asked, providing the incorrect number of people that attended the rally. “This tells me pretty much every one of them still follow Obama!” On Breitbart.tv, a comment on the video thread there by someone who called himself “demdicks” tries to pick a fight. “The 2010 elctions (sic) are going to be a riot, literally!!” the poster writes. “I know I’ll be there and so will tens of thousands of other people just HOPING to see some acorn, black panther action. Bring it on, boyz, we be waitin’ on ya.”

Jay Adams, the videographer who shot the video, did another video to comment on what had taken place in the first one. “In shooing out of ACORN, I hope to show that we’re shooing out a solution that is not going to work for this country,” he said. What works for this country is what our founding fathers have based – built this nation upon.”

There has however arisen a problem. While it is not known at press time who the street vendors in question were, ACORN says they never had people working at the rally, and with the exception of Tim Jones assertions in the video, no one else has been able to confirm that the situation was as Jones has said it was, and he has not been heard from since the video. The video’s legitimacy is based on the word of a man who has maintained a low to non-existent profile since the video came out, and the cameraman, a conspiracy theorist who believes that Russia want to launch a nuclear war to conquer the world.

Vendors are a common sight at any given rally or march in Washington D.C. What they sell on a particular day depends on who is going to be out. If it is an anti-war rally, peace sign buttons are the order of the day. If it is an inauguration, Patriotic-themed items will be for sale. This day saw the tea parties, and the vendors, who position themselves early in the morning to get the best spots sold the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag that was designed by Continental Colonel Christopher Gadsden of  South Carolina in 1775 as a standard for the commander in chief of the American Navy. In addition, they sold foam pitchforks, “flush Congress” plungers, and various buttons. But according to ACORN spokesperson Ian Phillips, the only flags any of their members sell would be to their members at conventions. None of their people were at the Sept. 12 rally as vendors or for any reason representative to ACORN, and whomever was being targeted by Tim Jones in the video might have been unfortunate pawns in a rather racist game of his.

“It wasn’t us,” Phillips told One People’s Project. “Unfortunately, you know this better from the work that you do, the kind of bogeymen that they’ve created over the years of some kind of freeloading person of color. Now they have transferred and said all these folks are with ACORN.”

Phillips says this kind of scapegoating is something that the organization has had to deal with,
well before the Leadership Institute’s James O’Keefe videotaped various ACORN staffers suggesting ways to violate the law. Earlier in the year there were warnings from conservative figures like Fox News’ Neil Cavuto that ACORN was mounting a counterstrike against this element. “In Florida, they put it on their list groups that ‘ACORN is going to be there, come out in force and tell ACORN what you think of them or ACORN is going to infiltrate, If you see anyone holding a camera, they’re from ACORN,’ but we never come to these things,” he said. “We never engage these kooks. We don’t go and film, none of our staffers do.”

Jay Adams

The aforementioned videographer Jay Adams, a graduate student from the University of Connecticut, is pretty well documented on the internet via his YouTube, MySpace and Facebook accounts, his blog and his website “In 1991, during the first Gulf War, I had a prophetic vision of a future Arab/Israeli war and nuclear Apocalypse in connection with my studies of long-wave patterns of history,” He wrote in the “About Me” section of his blog. “This vision led me to uncover how Russia is underhandedly plotting to conquer the world via a surprise nuclear war against the West that will be started in such a manner that everyone will blame ‘The Jews’ and America for causing the global holocaust of mass destruction. In reality, however, the Kremlin is guilty for this ultimate act of premeditated mass murder, and I’m here to prosecute the evildoers accordingly.” In one of his videos he is seen as a lone counter protester to an anti-war rally in New York City, calling himself a “Protest Warrior” which was the name of a short-lived right-wing activist group founded in 2003 to stage counter-demonstrations against left wing protests and other activism.

When One People’s Project contacted Adams to discuss the video in question, he first responded with “piss off,” but was persuaded to comment further. “Watch the video,” he wrote. “It is evident based upon the testimony of Tim Jones, the failure of the accused to address the allegation, etc., etc. But you don’t want to see the truth. You want to misreport and misinform because you think this serves your interest. In this light, you’re a fraudster defending fraudsters.”

Tim Jones

But it is Tim Jones himself, the one person that can clear up a lot of the confusion that is not doing so. One People’s Project has also tried to contact him via [email protected], the email address he provides on the video, but he has yet to respond. He has a very limited presence on the internet. The only other internet presence that is readily apparent for Jones before the rally is on stockpickr.com, where he maintains a portfolio. After the rally Jones had not come forward until Friday, when he opened up an account with Free Republic, accepting an invitation to do so by “kozanne”, another member. He has only posted once there to date and it was to chime in on the comments made on the thread about his video:

I agree, we must do what we can.
Thank you kozanne for inviting me and your support.
I appreciate everyone’s thoughtful comments and support. We the People need to find a way to be more effective. I don’t know how yet, and I learn best by doing. Still searching for more effective ways. At least 2 truths can be followed:
1. Non-violent protest works
2. Shine the light bright, sound the alarm loud when fraud is detected.
Thanks again for your support,
Tim Jones

Jones, however is not getting support everywhere. One person on Twitter opines, “who gave [email protected] the right to say who could be there what a jackass”. There is also some talk of the video on DC Indymedia, none of it favorable.  “If these women are NOT from ACORN, that shows the Teabaggers to be even more racist and even more prejudiced than the video appears to show!” commented regular poster “WQST”, who provided the audio from the video.

With the possible exception of radio host Mark Levin very few conservative notables have commented on or promoted the Tim Jones video.