Tea Party Express -- Not Quite the Whole Story

While we were at the Tea Party rally held in Rio Rancho Tuesday, we listened (and recorded) one of the speakers at the event, a Mr. Kenneth Gladney, who claims in the video to have been assaulted by members of the SEIU, a labor union, outside of a Health Care Town Hall in St. Louis, Missouri.

While it is true that Mr. Gladney was in fact assaulted on that day -- August 6th, 2009 -- what is less than true is the way in which Mr. Gladney presents his story.

In the video, Mr. Gladney states that he was assaulted by 4 people, three men and a woman and that the man who punched him in the face was the Director of the SEIU. He didn't give his name, or any other descriptive facts about this particular assailant, but he stated that he was a "Reverend."

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, there were only two people arrested for alleged assault and while neither were identified, there was no indication that SEIU members were directly involved in the assault. Others who were arrested were done so for interference with police work.

Additionally, Mr. Gladney himself was not even sure that SEIU members were those to blame. In an interview with Fox News shortly after the assault, Mr. Gladney stated:

"To tell you the truth, I don’t know anything about them. All I know is they belong to some type of a union of- of some sort. I was just there to- you know, to do a job. I wasn’t there to- you know, join in or to have an opinion on anything that was going on, for that matter, and- you know, I didn’t say anything to these- to these people. They just started attacking me."

In the video, Mr. Gladney states the he was selling his flags, trying to make a living as he was unemployed. In the Fox news article, he stated that he was barred from entry to the event.

NewsBusters, a conservative website posted a video of the aftermath of Gladney's assault, but when you watch the video, all you see are SEIU members walking around the scene, not actually doing "the dirty work." If this is the evidence of union involvement, organization and execution, it is tangential at best.

While any violence against Gladney is certainly to be condemned, his claims that the SEIU was behind the attacks are less than solid.

We may note that while Mr. Gladney claims to be an independent, he certainly seemed to relish the opportunity to speak at the rally, and has set up a donation page under the title of "Project Liberty." Project Liberty is a program which seeks to spread the word regarding freedom of speech to youths. We're not skeptics, but he failed to mention this at the rally.

He was, however, selling his flags for $5 each.