What is it like to attend a tea party rally?
By Rex Stanfield
On Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 I used a personal holiday from my night job to attend the tea party protest in Atlanta, Georgia. For this, I drove 2 hours each way from my home in northern Alabama. In the following days many reports differ about how many attended in Atlanta and similar gatherings nationwide, and even how many there were. They ranged from 1,000 attendees in Atlanta to 30,000. Some news media claimed the events were attended by angry whites eager to restart the Civil War, dissolve the government, and revert American society to anarchy and chaos. You may be watching all this and wondering, “It this something I can agree with?”; you may be thinking of getting out to the next tea party in your city but you’re not sure what you’d be getting yourself into; You may have never thought of attending a political rally in your life because you’re seen the chaos and rioting that has often characterized such events since the radical 60’s. I decided to help cut through the static by giving a candid, first-hand account from the largest of the gatherings this past week. Here are questions you may have. If you have others, please contact me at this site or by email at rex.stanfield@statesovereignty.org, and I will answer if I can.
Arriving more than 2 & 1/2 hours before the tea party
How many were there?
With both the tea party and a Braves game happening downtown on the same night, so I decided to leave my car at a MARTA station outside the city and take the train in. As I walked the one block from the Georgia State station, I saw several people parking their cars nearby and making the way across the street to the Georgia Capital Building. For an event that officially began at 7 PM, we were early arrivals at around 4:20. On arrival at the capitol steps, I estimate 200-200 people already gathered. The streets were open for traffic, so the folk were gathering across the street on the sidewalk in front of the Central Presbyterian Church between Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Mitchell Street. By 5 pm Washington Street was closed and the crowd took over from traffic. As the evening commute progressed I was unable to see the end of the sea of people, but the circling television helicopters gave some indication of the crowd with the size of the large circles they made above us. The choppers disappeared behind nearby buildings while photographing the crowd, and that indicated to me that more than one city blo
ck was becoming engaged in the gathering. Certainly the intersections of Washington at both MLK and Mitchell were closed, and I saw the tops of signs and flagpoles in the street toward Trinity Ave and the rail viaduct beyond MLK. I later heard reports that the crowd surrounded the church grounds on all sides, down the block and along Central Ave behind the church where no on could have come close to seeing the stage. When speeches called for the crowd to shout in unison, for example “Are we getting the kind of government we want?” the resounding “NO!” from the assembled crowd resonated along the concrete caverns for a second afterward. Word came from the that during the event that , unofficially, around 15,000 people were estimated to be in attendance and that ours was vying with Sacramento for the largest tea party in the country. But, that some in the news media had been reporting a turnout of less than 1,000. By the following day when more official estimates emerged, the number had grown to 20,000. Major League Baseball report that 19,204 attended the Braves game a few blocks away just across the cloverleaf. So apparently, the tea party was a larger event than the game.
Who was there?
I talked to several people and without exception everyone I asked said that this was the first time they have ever attended a protest or done anything remotely political. If any political activists were there, they were not conspicuous. Indeed, most seemed somewhat apprehensive about engaging in activism. Those I spoke with indicated that, like myself, they have been politically aware their entire lives, but never politically active. Their involvement with politics has been limited to quietly paying attention and voting. But now they see that this is the time for action since the activism of others has led to a degradation of the country they love.
Again, some of the informational static in the media have attempted to portray the gatherings as purely an Archie Bunker Rebellion of old angry white men. Nothing could be farther from the truth. More conspicuous than any other demographic, I saw families, moms and dads with children from toddlers to teenagers. I would guess at more women than men, but it would be only a guess. Most attendees appeared to be white, but not all, by far. Caucasians are, after all, a majority of the population. People of African-American, Latino, and Asian descent were also in evidence, but in what numbers is it impossible to know, since visually determining any person’s ethnicity can be far from accurate.
Even idealology differed among the participants, with the sole unifying characteristic being that the present government is moving the country in the wrong direction. Some supported the fair tax, some called for a flat tax, some like myself talked up state sovereignty, some were protesting bailouts rewarding failure, some were angry at prominent Congressional Democrats, some at President Obama, and some decried tax evasion by public officials. Some even called for secession; I saw one confederate flag – this is the Deep South, after all, and others around me looked on it with disgust. A person does not have to be in ideological lock-step with the crowd in order to participate in the tea party. So, when you hear on the news that the protests were all about this or that, know that the media outlet saying it is attempting to portray it as what they want you to think it was rather than simply report it. If you attend a tea party protest, it is about what you as a participant say it is about, not what the media tells others it was about. Listen to the participants themselves, not the media.
Who organized the gathering?
Speaker Pelosi declared the following day that the tea parties were funded and organized by big-money right-wing organizations and corporations, and it was repeated by most media outlets. CNN told us that it was organized by Fox News, talk radio, and the Republican Party. Nothing could be farther from the real truth. In fact, both Fox and the RNC appeared to be taken by surprise. Fox News is set apart from the other media outlets only in that it covered the rallies in a transparent way without placing its own coloring scrim over the events.
The greatest testament to the true grass-roots characteristic of the protest is the simple fact is that almost everyone was holding was holding a hand-made poster. The fairtax.org organization handed manufactured Fair Tax signs among the crowd to some who hadn’t brought their own signs. Apart from that, all the signs appear to have been made at home using construction paper and felt markers.
Families attending the tea party
Rick Santelli called for a tea party in Chicago while reporting for CNBC February 19, 2009 from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He ranted about government policy rewarding failure, and his calls rallied commodities traders on the floor of the exchange nearby. I was watching CNBC at the time, and it was reported by other media outlets. This was the first I heard rumbling of a growing tea party sentiment. I knew I was personally ready already to join a protest of runaway out-of-control Federal Government power. I joined FaceBook tea party groups and started my own State Sovereignty group. By the last week of March I knew a tax day tea party was being planned for April 14th in Atlanta, and I requested an off-day from work so I could attend, more than 2 weeks in advance. I heard Fox News and talk radio discuss the upcoming tea parties for the first time less than one week prior to the event. I never heard anything from Michael Steele or the Republican Party, still to this day. I cannot speak for other attendees or other political rallies and I would not profess to do so, but this one was truly a grass-roots movement for me, and everyone else I spoke with during the event.
Was there any trouble?
Just to my left a large group of people standing in the streets were angry that a tent owned by radio station 920 WGKA blocked their view of the stage, yet did not appear to be in use by anyone. During some of the speeches the crowd in that area began chanting “Move That Tent,” in an attempt to get the radio people’s attention to the problem. The station never responded by moving the tent, and no one ever touched it. It was clear there was frustration, but no one took matters in to their own hands, choosing instead to remain well-behaved. One person claiming to be an ACORN employee moved through the crowd attempting to make participants angry by giving opposing views, but the response from the crowd was to laugh at him and dismiss him. There had been advance word-of-mouth warnings that political opponents would attempt to portray the gathering as angry by provoking violence, but if that occurred, it was not successful. Whenever people bumped into one another or tried to walk among the thick crowd, it was always, “Excuse me,” “I’m Sorry”, etc. The crowd was remarkably polite. I observed a lady, apparently around 50 years of age, who seemed to be overcome by the heat or standing for a long period, and others around her rushed to assist to get her beyond the fence line so that she could sit and be attended to by emergency workers. Not only did I observe no trouble, I observed a thousand acts of kindness, and I heard of no problems among all the other 800+ rallies that day.
What was the program about?
It is impossible to encapsulate the meaning of the rally in a small paragraph, but certain themes prevailed. It was certainly about much more than just taxes. Government spending of wealth that won’t even be created for generations in the future was a central theme, but even larger than that looms the underpinning problem: Runaway, out-of-control government power intruding upon the private lives of the people, their state and local governments, their businesses and private-sector jobs. The ideals and principles articulated by the Founding Fathers whose inspiration made the United States a reality, the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were also common themes. Thomas Jefferson was quoted in particular, as were Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry and Paul Revere. Apart from Jefferson, the most-often-quoted historical figure was Ronald Reagan, “Government is not the solution to the problem – government is the problem.” Taxation was highlighted because of the date, and it was made clear by many that an increase government spending is an increase in taxes, regardless of the present tax rates, and government spending has increased already more in this young year than in any period of the nation’s history.
Ultimately, though, the tea party restored the faith in America for the quietly patriotic Americans who attended. They – no, we - have been led to think recently that more Americans want to move the USA into a socialist economy and authoritarian government than want to maintain individual liberties and severe limits on government power.
Will there be more tea parties?
I am already hearing that the next round of tea parties will be scheduled for July 4th, 2009, the 233rd anniversary of the reading of the Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia after its passage in the Second Continental Congress. I have not heard this mentioned at Fox News, but at FaceBook and several other blogs. I plan to attend this one also, but this time I plan to make the 12-hour drive to Washington, DC. This next time I hope for five times as many participants nationwide.
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