Talking To the Tea Baggers
Video from the front lines of the right’s latest hobby horse.By Jesse Singal
April 16, 2009
(Photo by Shereen Hall/Campus Progress)Since one of yesterday’s Tax Day Tea Party protests was being held in Lafayette Park, which is across the street from the White House, I decided to go and to bring a camera to record the event and some attendees’ reactions to it. The protest took part under a persistent rain that occasionally lightened but never fully dissipated. During the first portion, a couple of the activists hosting the activities introduced a series of speakers to come up and give short talks on stage (some of them appeared to be involved in the movement; others seemed to simply be “concerned citizen” types).
Later, some bigger names, including Laura Ingraham and Alan Keyes, spoke, during which I got reactions from some of the people in attendance—some in the park and others who had moved to the area in front of the White House.
I’ll let the folks I talked to speak for themselves, but my overall reaction was that it wouldn’t be fully accurate to describe the event as a contrived gathering thrown together by high-powered sponsors. It’s certainly true that the protests benefited from some powerful “astroturf” connections, and were publicized endlessly by major right-wing media outlets like Fox News. But the crowd was also quite large (somewhere in the range of a thousand, I would estimate), and the people I talked to, who had traveled from as far away as Oregon, were genuinely upset. Unlike the Tea Party movement in general, they were relatively adept at relating their grievances: They’re mad that, in the wake of an economic crisis, our federal government is giving countless billions to giant banks.
To be sure, many of the peripheral messages that were delivered (which you’ll see below) were offensive and characteristically radical—attendees and speakers echoed the “Obama is a socialist” line, I heard the word “welfare” more than once, and the event attracted some conspiracy theorists (see the video of “Lancelous” below) and outright racists. But I still spoke to a healthy percentage of people who didn’t, at least at first glance, appear to fit into the radical-right mold.
On-stage speakers:
Mindy McAlindon, the founder of teatodc.com, noted that the country was built on “Judeo-Christian values” and claimed that the Obama administration is trying to disempower those who provide for the nation’s well-being by working hard. “Can we secure the poor if we destroy those who provide the wealth?” she asked the crowd, which responded with a firm “No.”
Jeffrey Shapiro invoked fears of government-run health care. “We don’t want federal bureaucrats deciding who lives and who dies,” he told the crowd:
Another speaker, Jason, got on stage with his family and held up a sign which read “Stop!!! Stealing from my children!”
“Quit stealing from my children, Mister President!” he screamed, his voice cracking. He accused the U.S. government of “attacking the producing class” (this theme, that the government is punishing hard workers, was a common one throughout the event):
Attendees:
Jack and Ryan talked to me a little about their fears about Obama and the economy:
Abraham Mudrick, who was holding a sign with a quote from Benito Mussolini that seemed to implicate Obama in precipitating a slide toward fascism, joked that he had walked from Silverton, Oregon, and gave his views on the origins of the crisis:
Later I talked to Rob Edwards, a 21-year-old college student who came to the protest as part of a group from George Washington University. He spoke of some of the generational differences between the younger and older protesters:
I also interviewed another college student, Jenna, who talked about the iniquities she saw in the bank bailouts:
As I was talking to Jenna, I overheard a man engaged in a heated diatribe before a circle of onlookers—a diatribe that included a reference to “Shylock usury.” He expounded for awhile on his conspiracy theories and then began arguing with another protester who had a slightly less paranoid take:
The man, who said he wanted to be known as “Lancelous,” agreed to an interview afterward, and spoke of a vast web of powerful, shadowy figures who had intentionally triggered the United States’ financial crisis:
Jesse Singal is an associate editor at Campus Progress.
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Comments
I want to see everyone on the Left that is calling these guys “teabaggers” accept Rush Limbaugh when he calls the media and some other select Obama supporters “butt buddies.”
Somehow, I think that wouldn’t be acceptable to most people on this site and it would be condemned as offensive, vulgar and juvenile.
I credit the writer for not using the term, but the article headline and video titles include it.
— Jim - Apr 16, 03:10 PM - #The sophmoric toilet humor, invoking sexual imagery in order to debase legitimate protests, started on CNN and MSNBC and continues here. Liberals are intolerant and dismissive of other viewpoints. They are also truly afraid of mobilized conservatives otherwise they wouldn’t be making these sick and childish jokes.
— Jason - Apr 16, 03:36 PM - #the ignorance (and, in many cases, blatant racism) displayed by these protesters is incredibly depressing. perhaps more so because it’s unsurprising.
funny how those who were so quick to call liberals “un-american” for daring to criticize president bush are the same people calling our president (who was elected by a clear majority, btw) all number of names. get over it. you lost.
oh! and enjoy the tax breaks that you will probably be getting from the government you hate so much.
— kate - Apr 16, 04:34 PM - #Oh, calm down #1 and #2. Conservatives are just too sensitive now that they’ve lost their way. I thought conservatives were the masters of trivializing real issues… tire gauge anyone?
— Jon - Apr 16, 04:43 PM - #these folks deserve to be teabagged by jeff gannon
— james guckert - Apr 16, 05:13 PM - #I think its too bad that “Lancelous” was made out to be a kook in the writing. The things he said about the Fed and income taxes are completely true. It baffles me why people don’t think more about the fact that the gov’t will forever be in debt as long as a private company prints the currency and sets the interest rates. And while he is extremely eccentric (and possibly a christian fanatic), demanding government transparency is one of the most progressive ideas people are talking about. Everyday even the corporate media reveals ties between government insiders and those receiving bailouts and gov’t contracts.
I don’t believe in capitalism, but i do believe that those banks should have been left to fail – wouldn’t that have been capitalism coming full circle?
— Masha - Apr 16, 06:03 PM - #Kate-
— Jim - Apr 16, 07:07 PM - #Just because some income taxes are going down in the lowest brackets it does not mean that taxes generally are decreasing. The plan doesn’t call for it. In fact, the tax cuts that are coming for income don’t factor into much anyway— they essentially are just less with-holding, as the government will be taking the taxes at year’s end, but only taxing X% on each paycheck. By this time time year you’ll be paying it anyway. It’s a shell game.
Actually, Jason, after being called far worse by the right for nigh-on the past 29 years, a little payback with toilet humor is something you need to just get in touch with. “mobilized conservatives” would be a relief to the rising Xtian fascism that your lot are fomenting. The tea-bag party horsehockey is a sick joke, from the FreedomWorks right-wing protofascists on down. We’re only intolerant and dismissive of proven-fails not conservatives per se. Maybe you need to get some liberal and progressive friends to party with.
— JustJack - Apr 16, 07:44 PM - #For #8, I suppose two wrongs make a right.
— 53egradstudet - Apr 18, 10:02 AM - #For #8, I suppose two wrongs make a right.
— 53egradstudent - Apr 18, 10:02 AM - #