Tips for Tea Partiers Coming to D.C. for Glenn Beck Rally

Were you planning on visiting Washington, D.C. for Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28? If so, Maine Refounders, a Tea Party group, has a very helpful guide for visitors to the nation's capitol. The author, Bruce Majors, calls the guide "a list of free, cheap, good, bad, and safe or unsafe things." Here are some highlights:

The free: Luckily, there's plenty of free WiFi in the city. No doubt useful for uploading waving .gifs of the U.S. flag. And by "free," Majors forgot to add, "paid for by companies that benefit from substantial government subsidies."

The cheap: a few diners. But beware Pasha Bistro, located in "Dupont Circle, gay area."

The good: a list of restaurants recommended by a "libertarianish" professor, and Westend Bistro. But be careful at Westend, as "Nancy Pelosi, Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell, Clint Eastwood, and other notables, good and evil, local and visiting, may be spotted."

The bad: the residences of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Why Majors suggests that visitors to the city protest the residence of a former senator, we're not entirely sure.

There's also an extended section on safety and social mores in the city, that notes "DC's population includes refugees from every country," and says this is due to turmoil in the "third world." These "refugees" are friends and family members of embassy officials, indicating that there are few, if any, immigrants who entered the city legally. The author helpfully explains that in addition to black Americans, D.C. has Africans direct from Africa, who do not like to be confused for African Americans or Africans from other nations. It's odd that this advice is specific to Africans, however, as D.C. is home to many European immigrants as well -- and I'm guessing Poles don't much care to be mistaken for German.

Visitors to the District are also advised to take government-owned Metrorail, but only the Red, Orange, and Blue lines. Under no circumstances are you to take the Green or Yellow lines -- no matter that each of these lines serves tens of thousands of riders daily who somehow manage to get to and from their destinations safely.

Majors says that in addition to the places he lists as "safe," there are other nice parts of D.C., including Catholic University and Silver Spring, Md., but he concludes that, as a visitor, "you don't know where you are so you cannot go, especially at night, unless you take me with you."

The Aug. 28 rally, which happens to be the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream Speech" is intended to "unite the American people under the principles of integrity and truth, and make a pledge to restore honor within ourselves and our country," according to Beck. It's fascinating that in this spirit, groups that are planning to attend the rally are choosing to divide the nation's capitol into acceptable and unacceptable areas.

Shani is the associate editor of CampusProgress.org. You can reach her at shilton@americanprogress.org.