The crowd gathers in the park. Credit: www.starznbarz.com

Occupy Tampa, the sunshine state`s version of occupy wall st. returned to downtown Tampa on Thursday. By noon there were a couple hundred folks gathered in groups around the park, some making signs,some making sandwiches,and some making speeches. As a group they were peaceful, a mantra that was promised and accomplished.There were a few people speaking their mind through amplified speakers attempting to get the crowd to move across the street to engage the Bank of America building and assemble on the sidewalk as an obstruction, to the crowds credit, very few responded to the call to do so. One thing I noticed, the folks angry with Bank of America, and "big corporations" did`nt seem to have any issues with the large BB&T bank building on the opposite corner- no one I spoke to seemed to know why one was bad, but not the other. There were several groups represented, a table of information promoting the socialist party, Ron Paul supporters, Tea Party folk, anti-capitalist protesters, and this attendee that told me a very interesting story about the star symbol on his FL. driver license -see the short video here http://www.starznbarz.com/occupytampaevent For the most part, the protesters seemed to want "greedy corporations" to pay their taxes( a reasonable request), corporate America to return the power to the people,as well as provide jobs(except, I assume, the one protester whose sign read 'this is my job"). All said and done this was a textbook example of the American people exercising their Constitutional rights, whether you agree with the messages or not, the Founders would be proud. We will have photo`s and video`s posted on our site, www.starznbarz.com as soon as editing is completed later today.