Taking it to the Street

The Tea Party crowd has had its day in the Washington sun with a rally led by Glenn Beck to “restore honor to America.” Now it’s liberal groups’ turn with a massive rally planned for Saturday meant to frame the mid-term elections as a fight for jobs.

Among the groups headed to Washington are unions—the AFL-CIO is busing in members from around the country—and civil rights groups. The so-called One-Nation Working Together rally has been put together by some 400 groups in all and they hope to draw more than 100,000 demonstrators to D.C.

"We're not a response to the Tea Party. If anything, we're the antidote. We are a different response to the same moment," NAACP president Benjamin Jealous told ABC News. "They have sought to attack diversity. They have attacked the 14th amendment. They made racial profiling the law of the land in Arizona and have ambitions to do it elsewhere. We say, 'Don't push down on diversity, push up on prosperity.'"

So the liberal groups and arch-conservatives will have had their crack at sending a message to Washington.

For moderates, the chance comes with marches led by television personalities. Jon Stewart, the host of “The Daily Show,” is planning an event he’s calling the “Rally to Restore Sanity,” which will include a march on Washington October 30. That one wouldn’t be much of a march without a counter-demonstration, and Stewart’s faux-conservative pretend arch nemesis, Stephen Colbert, is leading his own rally October 30, the “Keep Fear Alive” rally.