What I Saw at the Tea Party
At the recommendation of Pilgrim, all are welcome to share descriptions, thoughts, and analyses of the Tea Party in the comments below. Before you launch into your comment, however, you are encouraged to tell us where and when you attended a tea party.
I'll begin with my own description. I wrote the following on April 15, 2009 in an e-mail to Peter after I'd just gotten home from the San Jose Tax Day Tea Party:
The San Jose Tax Day Tea Party was the first protest I've been to in my life. When I admitted as much to a fellow protester holding a sign that read You Can't Spend Your Way to Prosperity, she proudly divulged, "This is my first protest, and I'm and old lady!" I felt proud to be among the crowd of 700 strong protesting bailouts, runaway spending, generational theft and higher taxes. The crowd was a collection of people from all walks of life: families with small children, working people in suits that had just gotten off from work, war veterans, college students.
At one point during the event, a small group of rabble-rousers showed up to protest our protest. By the looks of their signs -- This is OUR land and No humans are illegal and Amnesty Now! -- these were folks from Amnesty International and/or La Raza. They were obviously trying to disrupt the protest, but they were met with resounding failure. When the Amnesty International folks began yelling on their megaphone and beating their bongos, the Tea Party Protesters drowned them out with song. We sang the national anthem, "Battle Hymn of the Republic", "God Bless America", "Let Freedom Ring," and "Proud to be an American."
If you asked me to describe what occurred at the tea party, what I would describe wouldn't sound like much. We chanted "USA", we waved American flags, we held signs of protest up high, we smiled, we laughed, we struck up conversations with one another. But I have a feeling that this description fails to convey what really happened at this protest. What happened at this protest and at the hundreds across the country was the rebirth of the conservative movement. Only time will tell whether or not this nascent movement will pick up the momentum it needs to affect change of any significant magnitude, but my feeling is that it will.
I attended subsequent tea parties in San Jose on July 4, 2009, in Santa Cruz in late August, 2009, and in San Jose in November, 2009. I eventually stopped attending tea parties, as I explain in a comment from earlier today, when the movement lost its old grassroots feeling and evolved into something a bit different. The movement still excites me though, and can count on my continued support.
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
A little off topic, ok , a lot. When's the last time we heard from Osama Bin Laden?
Jul '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
In the interests of the topic, Christine O'Donnell is leading in INDEPENDENTS.
Who's moderate now?
It's amazing that the assumptions made by Emily, et al. have been proven to be utterly and totally wrong. You don't raise 1.7M$US in less than week by not having a chance at winning.
Jim Geraghty (so wrong about this, who'd listen to him now? Obi Wan indeed. If I were as wrong in my job, I'd lose tenure and be an outcast. He's like a meteorologist. ) said she should take a small 6 figure dollar amount from the NRC and advertise in Salisbury, MD. He just doesn't have egg on his face, he's got the whole omelet. 1.7M$US buys a lot of time on cable TV in New Castle County.
All she needs to do is solidify the base. And if Castle has any huevos at all, he'd endorse her.
Sep '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
We've had two here in ABQ. They've both been of the vein line-both-sides-of-the-street on one of the major thoroughfares in evening rush hour. For the first one, the best guess is that about 10000 showed up which is a big deal here. The description of the people lining the street was pretty much as you described at your first one. The real energy came from the cars that were passing us - flags flying, horns honking, lots of supportive yells. That's still a high for me. Close to zero obnoxious opposition. Pretty much a white crowd; as ABQ has a large Latino population, I don't know whether I'm surprised about that or not. (A Latina Republican is leading the governor's race here; man, is she a tough bird.) I think there were more people at the second. No sense of loss of a grassroots movement.
The most memorable thing for me about all this is that I was listening to CNBC when Santelli made his rant. That was in February 2009. The One had been revealed and the pushback had already begun!
May '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
My sister and her family were at the protest rally in San Jose in July of 09.
May '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
On 4/15/09 I stopped in Dixon, IL to catch one on my way to STL. Very grass roots with about 400 people around a bandshell. Well-spoken amateur locals spoke of freedom, gov't spending, etc. 7/11/10 in tiny Winneconne, WI I saw 300 people listen to regional speakers and even Joe the Plumber. 9/4/10 in Sheboygan, WI; more than a thousand overspill the bandshell for Dick Morris, 6-7 local speakers, and ATL talk radio host Herman Cain.
In all cases, the people were average-looking folks I'd expect to see at the local fair or HS football game. Some had signs, most had their lawn chairs, many picnic lunches, and everyone picked up after themselves. Capitalists sold their souvenir wares near the candidate card tables. There were a lot of families with small kids and a lot more people between 55-70. I didn't notice any opposition, although some may have happened.
People were very friendly and folks just seemed more apt to strike up conversations with strangers. People are fired up. The atmosphere had a palpable "we're all committed to this" feel to it.
Jul '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
I went to one in San Francisco, in a strip-park down by the Embarcadero. Beautiful sunny day.
It was supposed to be held across the street from Nancy Pelosi's office, but, surprise, surprise, at the last minute, the police wouldn't issue a permit there, so we got shunted off to the netherlands.
Small crowd, maybe a couple of hundred people. Mostly middle-aged, middle-class. Lots of hand-made signs; some people dressed in patriotic regalia.
It was totally amateurish, endearingly so.
There was one young couple in the crowd. 20's, squeaky-clean. I went up to say a few words to them; told them I hoped they - and others like them - truly were the future of America.
I thanked a veteran in a wheel chair and then went on my way.
May '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
I've attended two: 4/15/09, and 4/15/10, both at the West Steps of the Capitol in Sacramento. Both were attended by very large crowds; I'd guess upwards of 5,000. A child of the 60s, these are the first and only protests I've ever been a part of. The crowd included people aged 4 or 5 there with their parents to people well into their 70s. I'd guess average age to be in the mid-40s to 50. Both were very pleasant events, no ugliness at all. Both, while predominantly White, included folks from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds both in front of and behind the microphone.
Aug '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
My first was on April 15, 2009, at the downtown Pavilion here in Charlottesville, Va. It was really well organized and had local luminaries, politicians, and even former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger as a speaker. The sign-bearing crowd was friendly, polite, and about a thousand strong. It was surprisingly robust considering the overwhelmingly Statist/collectivist nature of UVA.
The last one, on April 15, 2010, was a big disappointment. They stood on the grass median in the main Post Office parking lot, about 150 strong, sans luminaries, and there was only a local talk show host dressed in his usual 18th century Ben Franklin costume running the proceedings with a portable mike and amplifier.
I suspect the Tea Party here has split, becoming less organized and political; more philosophical; morphing into the crowd that swarmed the Lincoln Memorial for the Restoring Honor rally.
I went to D.C. that day, and there were tens of thousands of us, perhaps 100,000, who got stuck in a massive traffic jam caused by the shutdown of three out of four freeway lanes going east into Washington.
I found another toll road to D.C. that day, but many didn't.
Jun '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
Santa Fe, New Mexico (spring of 2009 and again in the fall):
The rallies attracted about 300 protesters each time. Few cities are as liberal as Santa Fe, so the numbers encouraged me. I would characterize the crowd as thoroughly middle-class with a median age of about 50. All in all I found the event to be almost prosaic except for the fact that "conservatives don't do this kind of thing (protest)", which seems to speak to the urgency of the situation.
Sep '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
Limited response to your request is quite interesting. Apparently you're the only Contributor who's been to a TP rally. Why would that be?
Jun '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
That depends - if you count the Ron Paul rallies in 2008 that we called Tea Parties and celebrated the same values as the 2010 tea parties. SF 2010 tax day was fun.
Note: the part I enjoyed most was the democrat fake tea party people will stupid signs like "communizm is evil." Tea Party people were following them around with signs that said "not with us" and such to make sure that everyone knew they were plants.
Some of the best conversations I participated in and witnessed were between knowledgeable tea partiers and clueless/dogmatic liberal college students.
There was one older, obviously college educated liberal spouting out the party line, while an articulate black gentleman was cornering him with facts, logic, history, and patience. It was hilarious. Every time the guy got really cornered, he would trot out some new liberal trope and the process would repeat itself. At the end of the rally, 3 of the approx 20 year old "plant" kids with signs gathered in a group with the older man and left together. I had to think he was a Berkeley professor, and wondered what it felt like to get schooled in front of your students.
Edited on Sep 18, 2010 at 12:18pmJun '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
July 4th in Naples Florida. Probably 2000 people ialong the four approaches of at a major intersection.with a lot of amusing signs, Ratio 100 to 1 of honks and thumbs up to single-digit salutes. Totally white, 60% upper middle age to seniors--that's the local demographic, so not notable. No speakers, no band, no notable organization -- really a senior flash mob.
Patrick, surprised me that few Ricochet members are much interested Tea Party activity. I expected a lot of reportage of biased reporting, SEIU interference, extensive minority envolvement etc (or not)
Aug '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
The first rally I attended happened the weekend before Obamacare passed, outside a local representative's office (who ended up voting for it, as we feared).
It was bitter cold, but there was still a crowd. (Though at one point about a third of the crowd was paid plants; however, the plants were on the clock, so when their shift was over, they left.)
I'd designed my own riff on the Gadsden flag for the occasion: a doctor-snake in solidarity with a patient-snake with the legend, "Doctors and Patients Agree: DON'T TREAD ON US". We brought extra copies of this poster, which were welcomed among the many ralliers who came without signs (the rally was an impromptu affair).
I noticed the hecklers more than the Tea Partiers. Since I had a tea kettle to bang (and a wooden spoon to bang it with), by placing myself between the hecklers and the Tea Partiers, I served the useful function of preventing the hecklers, who were nasty, from harassing the Tea Partiers too much.
Plus, perhaps seeing a young woman in hippie garb exhibiting a sense of rhythm while protesting Obamacare broadened the hecklers' minds a bit?
Nah...
Aug '10
Re: What I Saw at the Tea Party
Pilgrim
Patrick, surprised me that few Ricochet members are much interested Tea Party activity. I expected a lot of reportage of biased reporting, SEIU interference, extensive minority envolvement etc (or not)
I have a feeling...
a) That the Civility Conversation was too absorbing for many of us to give other topics like this one their due today.
b) For those of us who wish to protect our identity, there's perhaps that wee chance that by unguardedly describing what we personally witnessed at one of these things, we'd open a trail to give our identity (or location, at least) away.
and
c) Someone who spent his rallies wondering which arm was less tired of holding up his sign, or doing something crazy like banging a tea kettle, wearing a costume that causes discomfort or obstructed vision, or dancing might feel he was too wrapped up in these minutiae to properly observe the overall goings-on and give a fair report.
Speaking of which...
Anyone up for protesting more through dance? The Brazilians use samba to protest -- it seems like a good idea. Might as well keep protesting fun and civilized. Foxtrot, anyone? Lambada?