Tea Party Protests

Tea Parties

Tea Party Society sets Tax Day protests across America

date	event
Note:	Items are archived chronologically.
Taxed Enough Alraedy Parties	click image for Google Tea Party map FreedomWorks has put together a terrific map with info on all the Tax Day Tea Party events. Spread the word and click the map image to find all the location/time/date info you need. Go to the Tax Day Tea Party website for all the latest.
Second City Cancels Tea Party	A second city, the City of Burleson, Texas is trying to shut down a Tax Day Tea Party planned for April 15th. Previously, Cape Coral, FL, tried, unsuccessfully, to deny the "right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." According to local organizers, unelected "street supervisor" Ray Gonzales, informed them that he was going to prevent the event from happening. Mr. Gonzales told organizers that he is on a special events staff, which is under the city manager’s office in Burleson. Gonzales explained to one local organizer that the special events staff had decided this protest was "not in the public interest." He is telling organizers that David Wynn, the city manager, is his boss, and could overturn this decision. For the record, the city manager’s office told local organizers that they do not need a permit to demonstrate in Burleson, and they are not saying that the organizers need one now. Burleson Mayor Kenneth Shetter mayor@burlesontx.com Burleson City Manager David Wynn kmearns@burlesontx.com Burleson City Council citycouncil@burlesontx.com
Tax Day Tea Party Count Nearing 2,000	The American Family Association has announced its count is nearing 1,600 -- for Tax Day alone (map here). The AFA, planned to coordinate 1,000 Taxed Enough Already, or TEA, parties to be held at 12 p.m. on April 15 in front of city halls across the nation, but the group is pleasantly surprised as is stands to double that goal before Tax Day is here. "Our goal was to have a TEA party in 1,500 cities. We are nearly 100 cities above our goal and still growing," said Donald E. Wildmon, AFA chairman. The AFA sponsored TEA parties are in addition to hundreds of parties planned by other groups. Taxpayers are also organizing tea parties for Independence Day and various Saturdays so people with conflicting work schedules may attend. Wildmon said the protests are essential because the government's reckless spending is burdening America with insurmountable debt. While many mainstream media outlets have provided little to no coverage of the nation's numerous tea parties so far, DePrimo said the growing movement is proof that Americans no longer need them to launch a widespread revolution. "I think the media does whatever the media choose to do," he said. "We're all aware that the media have a liberal bias. I suppose if it's big enough, they will report on it. If they think it really may spur some change in Washington that the media elites don't want, they may ignore the story altogether." De Primo continued, "The good news is that with the Internet, Facebook, texting and with all the ways we can communicate today, we don't necessarily need the mainstream media anymore. The message can get out without them." Pajamas TV is now covering the Tea Parties. Join the PJTV citizen reporter corps and help with coverage. PJTV will have crews out, but with 300-500 tea parties scheduled, no media organization will be able to cover them all. So cover them yourselves, and let PJTV help get the word out! They tell me that about 200 have signed up, but more is always better!
Lefties Plan To Disrupt Tea Parties	Acts of protest tend to be synonymous with the left and are usually considered unsurprising on the right. However, when conservatives demonstrate -- liberals take notice in a big way. On Fox News Channel's April 7 "Your World," host Neil Cavuto reported that the Tax Day tea party protests on April 15 will be "infiltrated" by their political opponents and led by left-wing activist organizations. He specifically named Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). "Only eight days before a nationwide tea party, some over-caffeinated crashers aiming to lay waste to it," Cavuto said. "Reports of very well-organized infiltrators trying to mix in and rain on this parade. Talk about taxing." The Huffington Post has even set up a Web site for so-called citizen journalists to infiltrate the protests. "The Huffington Post wants to have citizen journalists at as many of these events as possible," Arthur Delaney wrote for The Huffington Post on April 7. "If you think you'd be interested in attending one of the Tea Parties and reporting back to us with dispatches, photos, or video, click here to sign up. We'll contact you shortly with further instructions." If you sign-up, you receive an automated message from Matthew Palevsky, the Huffington Post's associate editor of citizen journalism. "Thanks for becoming a Tea Party Reporter," the e-mail from Palevsky says. "This e-mail is just a quick confirmation that we have received your contact info and will email you our plans during the coming week. In the meantime, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Whether they be questions, suggestions or story ideas, share them with us at submissions+ideas@ huffingtonpost.com."
Media Mainstays Ignore Tea Parties	Major members of the traditional media in the United States -- television networks, daily newspapers and the like -- are ignoring the potentially nation-shaking story of the Tea Party protests because they attack Obama's massive tax-and-spend policies, according to a media analyst. "I don't think they like a nationwide protest they perceive as attacking their guy," said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Media Research Center's Business and Media Institute. "Yes, the mainstream media helped Obama get elected," he affirmed. Gainor said the ethics of professional journalism require that the "big news" of the day be covered. The American Family Association is reporting Tax Day protests for 2,000 cities -- and Tax Day Tea Party claims the movement has now spread overseas. With less than two days before citizens take to the streets, the mainstream media are beginning to report the widespread movement -- but many major outlets are doing so in critical columns and television reports. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, "Republicans have become embarrassing to watch. And it doesn't feel right to make fun of crazy people." He said the tea parties are not an accurate representation of public sentiment. They're AstroTurf (fake grassroots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects," he wrote. USA Today reported that the nationwide protest would number only 500 U.S. town and cities, while a Forbes columnist argued that "federal revenues as a share of the gross domestic product will be lower this year than any year since 1950." MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show" denigrated the movement with puns for 13 minutes, calling it "insanitea" organized by conservative activists. She laughed out loud as she disparaged "tea-baggers" during the broadcast. MSNBC's David Shuster accused Fox News of "fluffing" the Tax Day tea parties after the news channel became one of few major media outlets to consistently report on the events. Newsweek Senior Editor Daniel Gross said the movement was "AstroTurf" rather than grassroots because he alleges it began from the top down, according to NewsBusters. "I think, when it comes to teabagging, the president should probably just ignore this," Gross said. "He's got 10 other things on his plate, you know, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the banking crisis, the overall economic situation, health care. To get bogged down with a -- you know, what seems to be a fringe group of people throwing consumer products into the lakes and rivers of this nation doesn't seem to be worthy of his attention." A Huffington Post columnist mocked, "Yes, stand up. You've been pushed around by Obama for too long -- nearly 80 whole days. You poor long suffering muted people." However, hundreds of U.S. dailies and local news stations are announcing Tax Day tea parties in various towns and cities.
Boston Common Tax Day TEA Party	And, from Boston 01-20-13 "The End of an Error" Speaks for itself
Racists, Who Hate Black President	NewsBusters.com draws our attention to Thursday's "Countdown," where MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and his guest Janeane Garofalo defamed fellow citizens who attended the prior day's Tea Parties with vitriolic contempt (transcript). Garofalo actually called Party-goers "a bunch of teabagging rednecks," adding "this is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up." But that's just the beginning, for what Olbermann and Garofalo engaged in Thursday evening is amongst the most vile, hate-filled attacks on average American citizens ever conveyed on national television by so-called journalists. Please, watch this entire video -- oh, and brace yourself (08:27). Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
One Million!	An estimated 1 million Americans participated in at least 1,000 TEA Parties, according to reports by organizers tabulating the nationwide numbers, with documented protests held in 50 states. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform told WorldNetDaily.com, "The Obama administration has awakened a sleeping giant." Tax Day TEA Party national event coordinator Amy Kremer said she has confirmed that more than 850 parties took place. She has at least 100 more reports in her e-mail inbox that have not been posted. Asked how many people attended the events, she responded, "I would estimate it at over 1 million. I'm waiting on more numbers to come in from organizers right now. I can tell you it is absolutely over 750,000 right now." The largest protests occurred in Atlanta, Ga., with 15,000 participants. As many as 10,000 protesters participating in Sacramento, Calif., and Overland Park, Kan., according to data compiled by Americans for Tax Reform on more than 207 TEA Parties. Americans for Tax Reform has established an Internet page on the group's website where organizers of TEA Parties can submit attendance estimates to be included in the running tally. Michael DePrimo, special counsel to American Family Aassociation President Tim Wildmon, said that AFA's tea party website, TEA Party Day, had 2,031 confirmations that tea parties were to be held in as many cities. "Since yesterday, we have had 394 cities give us reports, many with photographs, about the tea parties that were held," he said. "We have not been able to get all the information up. We expect more to come in as the days go by." Here is a tally.
Taxed Enough Already
FBI Spied On TEA Parties	Even as average Americans were planning to get out in towns and cities to demonstrate against Big Government and Big Taxes, Federal Bureau of Intelligence Investigation (FBI) surveillance was being unleashed upon them. In fact, unsuspecting Tax Day TEA Party participants were being closely watched during the demonstration planning stages in a covert operation that began on or about March 23, 2009. According to this unimpeachable source, a single-page confidential directive issued by the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC (FBIHQ) was sent to each of the 56 field offices located across the United States on or about March 23, 2009, instructing the Special Agents in Charge (SACs) of those offices to verify the date, time and location of each TEA Party within their region and supply that information to FBI headquarters in Washington. The source stated this correspondence termed the TEA parties "political demonstrations," and added that the dissemination of the directive was very tightly controlled. "Not all agents were privy to this correspondence," stated the source, who compared the dissemination to an older "Do Not File" classification. In addition to obtaining or confirming the location and time of each "demonstration," each field office was instructed to obtain or confirm the identity of the individual(s) involved in the actual planning and coordination of the event in each specific region, and include the local or regional Internet web site address, if any. The information collected by region was then reportedly sent to FBI Headquarters. There's more details here . . .
FBI Keeps Tabs On TEA Parties	In April 2009, David Axelrod, Senior White House Adviser, said, "The 'TEA Party' movement is an unhealthy mutation from public dissatisfaction with the Obama administration’s economic policies." Since when is free speech, as personified by the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party grass-roots citizens movement, unhealthy? Since the leftward tilt of federal agencies accelerated during the first 100 days of the Barack Obama presidency. Consider, for instance, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has moved far to the left on the political spectrum in record time under Secretary Janet Napolitano. Consider also the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The once fabled and incorruptible FBI is showing signs of becoming a mere "yes man" for the Obama administration. Evidence for the yes-man charge is found in a recent report by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis Assessment (I&A), entitled, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." The report names law-abiding U.S. citizens, who choose not to support the liberal agenda of the Obama administration, as prime subjects for FBI surveillance. This Obama enemies list is a lengthy one, encompassing all "single-issue" advocates, including those who are pro-life, those who are gun owners, those who oppose illegal immigration, those who oppose "same-sex marriages" (such as Miss California), those who support third-party candidates, those who criticize free trade agreements, and, believe it or not, those military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and those veterans still around. A citizen-taxpayer who falls into several of these categories is even more likely to be targeted. The FBI appears to be following, in lockstep, the DHS agenda, in complete disregard for the constitutional rights of the citizenry. Lest the DHS, A&I, DOJ, and FBI forget, the U.S. Constitution protects the right to bear arms, the right to peaceful assembly, and free speech. A similar DHS report, also prepared by the I&A, was withdrawn within hours of its release. Continue reading here . . .