Tea Party protests

This article is about the protests themselves. For the Tea Party movement as an ongoing issue, see Tea Party movement.

A Tea Party protest in Hartford, Connecticut, on April 15, 2009.

Tea Party protesters fill the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol and the National Mall on September 12, 2009.

The Tea Party's protests are a series of nationally-coordinated protests across the United States beginning in early 2009. The protests are part of a nascent, larger anti-tax political movement called the Tea Party movement. Among other events, protests have been held on:

• February 27, 2009: to protest the TARP bailout bill signed by President Bush in October 2008 and the ARRA stimulus bill signed by President Obama ten days earlier.
• April 15, 2009: to coincide with the annual U.S. deadline for submitting tax returns, known as Tax Day,
• July 4, 2009: to coincide with Independence Day,
• September 12, 2009: to coincide with the anniversary of the day after the September 11 attacks.
• November 5, 2009: Washington D.C. again to protest the impending Health insurance vote.
• March 14–21, 2010: Several protests took place in Washington, D.C. during the final week of debate on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
• Most Tea Party activities in 2010 have been focused on opposing the efforts (supported by the Obama Administration) to enact a very broad program of changes to the health care and health insurance industries, and on recruiting, nominating, and supporting candidates for upcoming state and national elections.

The name "Tea Party" is a reference to the Boston Tea Party, whose principal aim was to protest taxation without representation. Tea Party protests have sought to evoke images, slogans and themes from the American Revolution, such as tri-corner hats and "Don't Tread on Me" flags. The letters T-E-A have been used by some protesters to form the backronym "Taxed Enough Already".

Commentators promoted Tax Day events on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, while the Fox News Channel regularly featured televised programming leading into and promoting various protest activities. Reaction to the tea parties included counter-protests expressing support for the Obama administration, and dismissive or mocking media coverage of both the events and its promoters.

History

See also: List of Tea Party protests, 2009 and List of Tea Party protests, 2010

Background

A Tea Party protester holds a sign saying "Remember: Dissent is Patriotic" at a Nashville Tea Party on February 27, 2009.

See also: Tax revolt

The theme of the Boston Tea Party, an iconic event of American history, has long been used by anti-tax protesters with libertarian and conservative viewpoints. It was part of Tax Day protests held throughout the 1990s and earlier. The libertarian theme of the "tea party" protest was previously used by Republican Congressman Ron Paul and his supporters as a fundraising event during the primaries of the 2008 presidential campaign to emphasize Paul's fiscal conservatism, which they later claimed laid the groundwork for the modern-day Tea Party movement. As home mortgage foreclosures increased, and details of the 2009 stimulus bill became known, including the provision for the AIG executive bonuses, organized protests began to emerge.

February 1st, 2009 "tea party campaign"

On January 19, 2009, Graham Makohoniuk, a part-time trader and a member of Ticker Forum, posted a casual invitation on the market-ticker.org forums to "Mail a tea bag to congress and to senate". The idea quickly caught on with others on the forum, some of whom reported being attracted to the inexpensive, easy way to reach "everyone that voted for the bailout."

Forum moderator, Stephanie Jasky helped organize the group and worked to "get it to go viral." Jasky is also the founder and director of FedUpUSA - a fiscally conservative, non-partisan activist group that describes themselves as "a group of investors" who sprung out of the market-ticker.org forums. The group had previously held DC protests in 2008. On January 19, 2009, Jasky had posted a formal invitation "to a commemorative tea party." She suggested they all send tea bags on the same day (February 1, 2009) in a coordinated effort.

The founder of market-ticker.org, Karl Denninger (stock trader and former CEO), published his own write-up on the proposed protest, titled "Tea Party February 1st?," which was posted in direct response to President Obama's innauguration occurring on the same day, and railed against the bailouts, the US national debt and "the fraud and abuse in our banking and financial system" which included the predatory lending practices currently at the center of the home mortgage foreclosure crisis. Karl Denninger, who helped form FedUpUSA in the wake of the March 2008 Federal Reserve bail out of Bear Sterns, had been a guest on both Glenn Beck and CNBC Reports. By February 1, the idea had spread among conservative and libertarian-oriented blogs, forums, websites and through a viral email campaign.

On February 11, talk radio host and Fox Business Network personality Dave Ramsey appeared on Fox and Friends, waving tea bags and saying "It's time for a Tea Party." He was on the show criticizing the newly confirmed Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, who that morning had outlined his plan to use the $300 billion or so dollars remaining in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds. He intended to use $50 billion for foreclosure mitigation and use the rest to help fund private investors to buy toxic assets from banks.

"Porkulus" protests and "First Tea Party" claims

The dominant theme seen at some of the earliest anti-stimulus protests was "pork" rather than tea. The term "porkulus" was coined by radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh on his January 27, 2009, broadcast in reference to both the 2009 "stimulus" bill, which was just introduced to the House of Representatives the day before, as well as to pork barrel spending and earmarks. This proved very popular with conservative politicians and commentators, who began to unify in opposition against stimulus spending after the 2008 General Election.

Competing claims have emerged over which protest was actually the first to organize. According to FreedomWorks state and federal campaigns director Brendan Steinhauser, activist Mary Rakovich was the organizer of a February 10, 2009 protest in Fort Myers, Florida, calling it the "first protest of President Obama's administration that we know of. It was the first protest of what became the tea party movement." Rakovich, along with six to 10 others, protested outside a townhall meeting featuring President Barack Obama and Florida governor Charlie Crist. Interviewed by a local reporter, Rakovich explained that she "thinks the government is wasting way too much money helping people receive high definition TV signals" and that "Obama promotes socialism, although 'he doesn't call it that'". She was invited to appear in front of a national audience on Neil Cavuto's Fox News Channel program Your World. Regarding the role Freedomworks played in the demonstration, Rakovich acknowledged they were involved "Right from the start," and said that in her 2 1/2 hour training session, she was taught how to attract more supporters and was specifically advised not to focus on President Obama.

However, though it was not the first protest of the Obama administration or of the stimulus, New York Times reporter Kate Zernike, reports that some within the Tea Party credit Seattle blogger and conservative activist Keli Carender with organizing the first Tea Party on February 16, 2009. Another article, written by Chris Good of The Atlantic, credits Carender as "one of the first" Tea Party organizers.

Carendar organized what she called A "Porkulus Protest" on President’s Day, before, as she says, "Rick Santelli’s rant!" referring to the CNBC reporter who called for protests after the announcement of the AIG executive bonuses in the face of increasing home mortgage foreclosures. Carender said, "Without any support from a national movement, without any support from any official in my city, I just got fed up and planned it." Carender said 120 people participated. "Which is amazing for the bluest of blue cities I live in, and on only four days notice!! This was due to me spending the entire four days calling and emailing every person, think tank, policy center, university professors (that were sympathetic), etc. in town, and not stopping until the day came." Carender held a second protest on February 27, 2009 which she claims was the first Tea Party. "We more than doubled our attendance at this one, and that is very much due to the fact that I had collected email addresses at the first one and was able to tell a couple hundred people at once about the second rally."

Carender contacted conservative author and Fox News contributor, Michelle Malkin in order to gain her support and publicize her event. Malkin promoted the protest in several posts on her blog, saying that "There should be one of these in every town in America," and that she would be supplying the crowd with a meal of pulled pork. The protest was held in Seattle on Presidents Day, February 16, the day before President Obama signed the stimulus bill into law. Malkin encouraged her readers to stage similar events in Denver on February 17 where President Obama planned to sign the stimulus bill into law.

A protest at the Denver Capitol Building was already in the works, which Michelle Malkin reports was organized by the conservative advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, and spearheaded by conservative activist group, Independence Institute as well as former Republican Representative and presidential candidate, Tom Tancredo. Another protest, organized by a local conservative talk radio station KFYI was held in suburban Phoenix, Arizona, on February 18, and brought 500 protesters. KFYI organized the protest in reaction to Obama's visit to the local high school to hold his first public talk on elements of the stimulus bill. By February 20, Michelle Malkin was using her nationally-syndicated column to attempt to present these three protests as a movement to her fellow conservatives, and continued to call for more. "There's something in the air," she wrote, "It's the smell of roasted pork."

First national Tea Party protests

On February 19, 2009, in a broadcast from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CNBC Business News Network editor Rick Santelli loudly criticized the government plan to refinance mortgages, which had just been announced the day before, as "promoting bad behavior" by "subsidizing losers' mortgages" and raised the possibility of putting together a "Chicago Tea Party in July". A number of the traders and brokers around him cheered on his proposal, to the apparent amusement of the hosts in the studio. It was called "the rant heard round the world" and quickly went viral after it received a big "red siren headline" on the popular conservative blog, drudgereport.com. According to The New Yorker writer Ben McGrath and New York Times reporter Kate Zernike, this is where the movement was first inspired to coalesce under the collective banner of "Tea Party." By the next day, guests on Fox News had already begun to mention this new "Tea Party."

In response to Santelli, websites such as ChicagoTeaParty.com, registered in August 2008 by Chicago radio producer Zack Christenson, were live within twelve hours. About 10 hours after Santelli's remarks, reTeaParty.com was bought to coordinate Tea Parties scheduled for July 4, and as of March 4, was reported to be receiving 11,000 visitors a day.

According to The Huffington Post, a Facebook page was developed on February 20 calling for Tea Party protests across the country. Group administrators included Eric Odom of the conservative activist group FreedomWorks, and the group was created by Phil Kerpen from the conservative advocacy organization Americans for Prosperity -- the same group credited for the Denver "porkulus" protest as well as Mary Rakovich's early February 10 protest. Soon, the "Nationwide Chicago Tea Party" protest was coordinated across over 40 different cities for February 27, 2009, thus establishing the first national modern Tea Party protest.

Protests

April 15 Tax-day events

Tea Party protesters in Louisville, Kentucky on April 15, 2009.

April 15, 2009 was the date of the largest number of tea parties, with demonstrations reported to be occurring in more than 750 cities. Estimates of numbers of protesters varied by location and source. The Christian Science Monitor reported on the difficulties of calculating a cumulative turnout and said some estimates state that over half a million Americans participated in the protests, noting, "experts say the counting itself often becomes politicized as authorities, organizers, and attendees often come up with dramatically different counts.". Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, estimated that at least 268,000 attended in over 200 cities. Statistician Nate Silver, manager of fivethirtyeight.com, has stated that the largest protests were in capitals and large cities while many others had little or no reliable media coverage and were thus not included in his estimate. He reported cumulative crowd size from credible sources to be an estimated 311,460 for 346 cities and on April 16, 2009 stated "essentially all major cities and state capitals should now be accounted for." The largest event, in Atlanta, Georgia, drew an estimated 7,000 to 15,000 people. Some of the gatherings drew only dozens.

An April 15, 2009 Tea Party protest outside the White House was moved after a box of tea bags was hurled over the White House fence. Police sealed off the area and evacuated some people. The United States Secret Service brought out a bomb-detecting robot, which determined the package was not a threat. Approximately a thousand people had demonstrated, several waved placards saying "Stop Big Government," "What Would Jefferson Do," and "Taxation is Piracy".

According to an April 20, 2009 Rasmussen poll, 51% of Americans polled viewed the protests favorably and 32% of these viewed them "very favorably." About one in four people polled knew someone who had attended a Tea Party protest. Those results, however, stand in contrast to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey in March which found that 62% said that they approved how Obama is handling tax policy. An April USA Today/Gallup also found that a majority of Americans favor the expansion of government economic intervention, at least for now.

April 15th - July 4th Tea Parties

After April 15, 2009 Tea Party rallies continued in various locales around the nation. Many of these events were focused on opposition to state or local taxes and spending, rather than with national issues. Late April saw Tea Parties in Annapolis, Maryland, White Plains, New York, Jackson, Tennessee, and Monroe, Washington. In May, there were six more Tea Party events in Tennessee, New York, Idaho, Ohio, Nevada, and North Carolina. During June, 2009 another dozen events were held in North Carolina, California, Rhode Island, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Montana, Florida, New York, and Washington state. On June 29, 2009 in Nashville, Tennessee, four thousand people rallied against new emissions trading (cap and trade) energy and universal health care legislation in Congress.

Independence Day Tea Party protests

A number of Tea Party protests were held the weekend of July 4, 2009, coinciding with American Independence Day. "The rally followed a national effort that drew thousands of activists to Tea Party events across the country on April 15, 2009 when income taxes are due".

On July 17, 2009 there were additional Tea Party protests around the nation organized by a group called Tea Party Patriots, this time against President Obama's proposed health care reform bill that they labeled socialized medicine.

Taxpayer March on Washington

Protesters walking towards the United States Capitol during the Taxpayer March on Washington, September 12, 2009.

Main article: Taxpayer March on Washington

On September 12, 2009, Tea Party protests were held in various cities around the nation. In Washington, D.C., Tea Party protests gathered to march from Freedom Plaza to the United States Capitol. Estimates of the number of attendees varied, from "tens of thousands" to "in excess of 75,000". A rally organizer asserted that one local ABC News station had reported attendance of over one million, but he retracted the statement after ABC News denied making any such report.

The march was reported as the largest conservative protest ever held in Washington, D.C., as well as the largest demonstration against President Obama's administration to date.

First Tea Party convention

Main article: Tea Party Nation

On February 4, 2010, the first Tea Party national convention was held in Nashville, attended by 600 people. The convention received broad media coverage as former GOP Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin was the featured speaker. The former Alaska governor was criticized for receiving as much as $100,000 to address the convention.

Tactics

The New York Times reported on August 8, 2009 that organizations opposed to the health insurance reform legislation were urging opponents to be disruptive. It noted that the Tea Party Patriots web site circulated a memo instructing them to "Pack the hall. Yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early. Get him off his prepared script and agenda. Stand up and shout and sit right back down." The memo continued, "The Rep [representative] should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington."

Some Tea party organizers have stated that they look to leftist radical Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals for inspiration. Protesters have also appropriated left-wing imagery; the logo for the 9/12 March on Washington featured a raised fist design that was intended to resemble those used by pro-labor, anti-war, and black power movements of the 1960s. In addition, the slogan "Keep Your Laws Off My Body", usually associated with pro-choice activists, has been seen on signs at tea parties.

Alleged Disinformation and attacks

Some opponents of the tea party movement have claimed they plan to infiltrate and dismantle the political group, by intensifying the perception of its members as racist, homophobic, and moronic. Jason Levin, an Oregon middle school teacher and creator of CrashTheTeaParty.org, claimed the group had 65 leaders in major cities across the country who were trying to recruit members to infiltrate the April 15th tea party events. Levin said they wanted to exaggerate the tea party's least appealing qualities.

Levin was placed on administrative leave April 15, 2010 by his school district after complaints were filed by several parents over his increasingly partisan political activism, and suspicion that he was using public school resources as a part of it. The investigation is ongoing.

Conversely, several of the major players in the Tea Party movement have formed a new National Tea Party Federation to help spread its message, and to respond to critics with a quick, unified response. "It took us 72 hours to respond to John Lewis," Skoda said, referring to the congressman who said a racial epithet was used at a Tea Party rally the previous month.

Reports of inappropriate behavior

There have been a number of allegations of racism, gay-bashing, anti-semitism and other abusive behavior by Tea Party protesters.

On March 16, 2010, at a Tea Party protest in front of the offices of Representative Mary Jo Kilroy, A protestor berated a man with Parkinson's disease, and threw dollar bills at him, with some additional protesters also mocking the individual. The protester initially denied the incident, but later apologized for his "shameful" actions.

On March 20, 2010, it was reported in Washington D.C. that protesters of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act used racial and anti-gay slurs. Several black lawmakers said that a group of demonstrators shouted at them and called them the "n-word". Congressman Emanuel Cleaver says he was spat upon, later adding, "I said to this one person, 'You spat on me.' I thought he was going to say, 'Hey, I was yelling. Sorry.' But he continued yelling and, for a few seconds, I pointed at him and said, 'You spat on me.'" Congressman Barney Frank, who is gay, was called a "homo", a "fag" and a "faggot" several times. One protester alleged that Frank had started an exchange by saying "f--- you"[sic] to her. Representative Andre Carson told a reporter that as he left the Cannon House Office Building with Lewis, some among the crowd chanted "Kill the bill, then the N-word." They chanted "the N-word, the N-word, 15 times. It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis." William Owens, a black Tea Party activist said, "Never did I hear any type of racial slur."

Conservative activist Andrew Breitbart has offered a charitable donation of $100,000 to the United Negro College Fund if John Lewis could either provide video evidence that racial epithets were hurled at Congressional Black Caucus members at the Washington D.C. nationalized health care protest of March 20th 2010, or pass a simple lie-detector test. Breitbart said the racial slurs never happened and were only alleged as a way for the left, abetted by the progressive media, to "marginalize" Tea Party supporters. Breitbart alleges that, "By crafting a highly symbolic walk of the Congressional Black Caucus through the majority white crowd, the Democratic Party was looking to provoke a negative reaction. They didn’t get it. So they made it up." He added "This is 2010. Even a racist is media-savvy enough not to yell the N-word."

In response to Breitbart's allegations that the spitting and racial slurs never happened, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said he himself had seen the events in question. “I watched them spit at people, I watched them call John Lewis the n-word,” Trumka said. “I witnessed it, I witnessed it. I saw it in person. That’s real evidence.” Breitbart posted a 48-second video on his website showing Lewis, Carson, other Congressional Black Caucus members and staffers leaving the Capitol and walking through a crowd of protestors in which no racial-slurs can be heard. Breitbart noted as proof to his claims that racial slurs were not audible on the video clip. The members of the Congressional Black Caucus making the allegations claimed that the 48-second video that Breitbart is referring to was taken when they were leaving the Capitol Building and that the racial slurs were shouted at them when they were entering the Capitol.

Another 2 and a half minute video that is on You Tube and other websites was taken of Lewis, Carson and the other Congressional Black Caucus members as they were ascending the stairs of the Capitol Building, at the time they claim the racial slurs were directed at them. On that video no racial-slurs can be heard either, only the words “kill the bill”. The video does clearly show Congressman Cleaver get agitated after walking within a couple of inches of a protester who is yelling through cupped hands. Cleaver then wipes his face as if he had been spat on. Whether the congressman was spat on intentionally by the protester, whether he just got hit with some spit by accident as he walked by the yelling protester, or actually spit on at all cannot be conclusively determined by the video.

Representative Mike Pence condemned the slurs and says he believes John Lewis' account. Pence told The Washington Post, "A couple of weeks before the alleged incident occurred, I was walking across the bridge in Selma, Alabama, with John Lewis. I take at face value what John Lewis said. If John Lewis said he heard it, I believe he's a man of integrity. And I would denounce those kinds of statements in the strongest possible terms."

One of Representative Anthony Weiner’s office staff reported a stream of hostile encounters with tea partiers roaming the halls of Congress. In addition to mockery, protestors left a couple of notes behind. According to the NY Daily Times, one letter "asked what Rahm Emanuel did with Weiner in the shower, in a reference to the mess around ex-Rep Eric Massa. It was signed with a swastika, the staffer said. The other note called the congressman “Schlomo Weiner,” among other hate-filled words."

On March 21, 2010, Springboro Tea Party founder, Sonny Thomas, posted racist comments on the group's Twitter webpage, including a slur against Hispanics. "Illegals everywhere today! So many spics makes me feel like a speck. Grrr. Wheres my gun!?", said one post. The posts triggered cancellations by several local and statewide political candidates scheduled to speak at a Springboro Tea Party rally on April 17. Other Tea Party officials say the posts were "classless" and way out of line, but say they don't represent the Tea Party movement as a whole.

On March 22, 2010, a Lynchburg Tea Party member, attempting to post the home address of Congressman Tom Perriello on a local blog, incorrectly posted the address of Perriello’s brother and encouraged readers to "drop by" to express their anger against Rep. Perriello’s vote in favor of the health care bill. The following day, a severed gas line was discovered in Perriello's brother's yard and FBI investigators determined that it was intentionally cut as a deliberate act of vandalism. The website issued a response saying the Tea Party member's action of posting the address "was not requested, sanctioned or endorsed" by the group.

On April 8, 2010, it was announced that the National Tea Party Federation had been set up to publicize the movement, and in particular to respond to criticism, such as allegations of racist behaviour by protesters. On April 26, 2010, the organization sent a letter to the Congressional Black Caucus denouncing racism and requesting that the CBC supply any evidence of the alleged events at the protest on March 20, 2010.

See also

• 9-12 Project
• Tea Party movement

External links

• Video coverage, the Taxpayer March on Washington, by C-SPAN
• Signs of Discontent: 9-12-09 in DC, slide show by Life magazine
• Signs of the Tea-Party Protests, photo essay by Time magazine
• "12 Tea Party leaders to watch", National Journal, February 4, 2010.
• Tea Party Express Comes To A Head On Tax Day by NPR
• A Time For Tea: A Tea Party Time Line (Oct 2007 - Feb 2010) by Alex Brant-Zawadzki