Tax Day Tea Party: No Permission to Protest in DC

Protesters in Washington, DC were told today that they could not protest in front of the Treasury, even though they had the necessary permit:

[The event organizers] were told they had two permits. One before the Treasury Department so folks could speak directly towards the nice Secretary who need not pay taxes like the rest of us. The second at Lafayette Park.  When people showed up Obama’s secret service overrode the DC promised permit and claimed jurisdiction over Treasury, but not evidently over Lafayette.   We have never had a problem like this with previous white Houses… The organizers were told all was okay and then White House changed the rules.   Why this happened this year and not the previous 20?  Dunno.

The secret service, much like the Department of Homeland Security, must earnestly believe the attendees were dangerous right-wing extremists.  But violent?  No more so than Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, and other Founding Fathers- these were the clear idols of attendees.  The crowd- both protesters and speakers- seemed happy with the label and felt in good company among the country’s early history.  If a speaker wasn’t poking fun of the DHS report, the crowd would do it for him or her.

“Civil disobedience?  No, Constitutional obedience,” said one of the early speakers, Mike Church.  He got the crowd yelling in support with each reference to the US Constitution.

But that wasn’t the only major last-minute roadblock put up by the leaders in DC:

According to national tax day event organizers, a donation of one million tea bags didn’t make it in time to be included on the event’s permit. So after the tea was delivered police officers made organizers load the tea bags back onto a delivery truck and take them away.

Is this not a perfect example what the people were protesting?!  No permission to hold tea?  How over-regulated is our society that one needs permission to have tea?

Despite these two setbacks, 3700 people attended the event.  All of them were crowded around the small ancillary stage in Lafayette Park which was originally intended to be an open mic.  It wasn’t as crude as a bullhorn and a soap box, but it seemed that way among the large crowd of umbrellas and signs.  The grassy park became deep mud as the heavy rain began right on queue with the first speaker.  From a distance, all one could see is mass of umbrellas and posters, and you would never know there was a stage in its center if not for the crowd quieting to listen between cheers.

Laura Ingraham drew a lot of applause, while some less famous speakers got the crowd thinking.  Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform), Rachell Hoff (Young Republicans), and Tom Shatz (Citizens Against Government Waste) all made good points.  My favorite speaker may have been Ed Hudgins of the Atlas Society, who talked about the different types of failed socialism the world has already seen.  A portion of his speech on what “Going Galt” means- and yes, there were lots of signs referring to John Galt- can be found online here.

The event organizers, who have now formed Smart Girl Politics, looked like vanilla soccer-moms.  Clearly this was a grassroots movement, and the event had a rather non-partisan feel.  Everyone was unified on the subject of freedom; liberty is very popular!  Some speakers and attendees identified themselves as conservatives, but the overwhelming message of the event was support for the Constitution (as interpreted by the Founding Fathers).  The Constitution is not partisan.

This was just one of over 700 similar protests happening in cities around the United States (and even a few in Europe).  An estimated one million people attended a tea party today.

Bias in Media: So what does the NY Times say about today’s event?  It isolate the movement by calling it a partisan event “largely created by the clamor of cable news and fueled by the financial and political support of current and former Republican leaders.”

The only organization in Boston re-enacting the original tea party — the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender group — was not associated with the partisan movement.

And their coverage quickly became a reprint of Obama’s teleprompter, reminding America that the president claims to have, “Passed tax cuts that will help our economy grow.”  In a second article, the smear coverage continued to show woman with tea bags on her head.