March 8 was circled on the map by a lot of Floridians as a day to protest the governor's and the legislature's budget proposals. The protests, dubbed "Awake the State" by organizer Ray Seaman of Progress Florida, were held in 32 cities across the state, including two events in Tallahassee, one in the morning and one in the evening. As soon as the word got out about the Awake the State rally in Tallahassee, Americans for Prosperity, the conservative organization funded by David and Charles Koch, began planning a counter-protest at the state capitol. In the lead-up to the rallies, a war of words in the media and elsewhere began over which rally would be bigger and which was more in line with the people of Florida. News organizations like Sunshine State News started circulating numbers suggesting that each of the rallies in Tallahassee was projected to be in the thousands. The Americans for Prosperity rally was supposed to draw as many as 10,000 Tea Party members and Rick Scott fans. Suggestions were made that the Tallahassee Awake the State rally was expecting to see as many as 8,000, but event organizers were quick to reject that idea, saying that the focus of Awake the State was never on Tallahassee, but was statewide, with grassroots organizers planning and pulling together individual rallies all across the state.
The morning Awake the State rally in Tallahassee, held when most state workers were unable to attend, was the largest of the three rallies, drawing more than 500 people and a number of state legislators and other elected officials, including Reps. Irv Slosberg, Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda, Alan Williams, Scott Randolph and Jeff Clemens, Sen. Tony Hill, former Rep. Curtis Richardson, County Commissioner Bill Proctor and former County Commissioner Cliff Thaell. Event attendees carried handmade signs and lined the street, getting tons of support from people driving by the rally in front of the County Courthouse. The messages from speakers and organizers were very unified: state workers, teachers, first responders and unions are good; Rick Scott, the legislature, the Tea Party and the budget proposal are bad; cuts to the budget hurt all Floridians and it's time for Floridians to stand up and fight back.
The Tea Party rally began as the first Awake the State rally was winding down. A crowd lacking the diversity of the liberal rally managed to fall short of not only the 10,000 that were expected, it fell short of the 500 that attended the Awake the State rally, managing to reach about 400 or so at its height. By the time Gov. Rick Scott spoke, only about 200 people remained. The signs at the Tea Party rally were dominated by pre-printed signs from Americans for Prosperity and hand-written signs that called for the end of public unions, the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection agency and collective bargaining rights. Crowd members expressed anger over taxes, immigration and government spending, not surprisingly, and the loudest cheer of the day was when Rick Scott mentioned rejecting money for high-speed rail.
Closing out the day, and going on through the time of the governor's state of the state address, was the evening Awake the State rally, which started off relatively small, but grew to over 400 people by the time the first hour of the event was over. The crowd was largely a different crowd than the morning rally and protesters were greeted with a constant stream of honks from the cars driving by the downtown park where the rally was held. Many of the speakers from the early event spoke at this rally, too, and they were joined by the likes of City Commissioner Andrew Gillum, former Rep. and CFO candidate Loranne Ausley, Reps. Mack Bernard, Mark Pafford and Richard Steinberg and former Republican Sen. Nancy Argenziano.
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2011.