Tea Parties a Test of Conservative Online Organizing
Why
In the world of online activism, a way to measure how unorganized a movement is by how many organizations claim credit for its actions. And so it goes with today's Tax Day Tea Parties, which harken back to the Boston Tea Party when Americans rebelled against British rule. Then, the impetus for the protest was for unfair taxation. Now, the cause is what protesters say is wasteful federal spending, such as the bailout money offered to companies such as A.I.G. and G.M. Though the protests are being billed as nonpartisan, the energy and buzz surrounding them has been building on conservative (and libertarian) Web sites for weeks, even before some 30,000 Americans took the streets in about 40 cities in the first nationwide tea parties in February, and before CNBC reporter Rick Santelli's now infamous rant on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Jason Norrett, a 34-year-old stay-at-home dad in Boise, Idaho, created his blog,Tea Party 2009, in late January. "I just had to do something to voice my frustration," Norrett, a Republican who voted for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in November, said in a phone interview. You can find the protest-organizers on Facebook, where a group called Tea Party has nearly 1,800 members. This morning, a member from Phoenix wrote on the group's wall at 3:30 a.m.: "I went to college and got my degree and a good job. I am hip deep in debt from my college loans, which I am paying back. I live within my means and keep track of my budget so I can be responsible and pay all my bills on time. Why should I have to pay for someone else's complete and total lack of responsibility???" You can find them on Twitter, where the hash tag #teaparty will be used by Twitterers to signal the day's events. You can find them on YouTube, where you can watch a videoof a tea party where an attendee holds a poster that reads "Stop Marxism, Fight Obama." For the online left, it's been far too easy to mock the tea party organizers. All the talk of socialism, Marxism and "tea-bagging," a slang reference for a sexual act made widely known by an episode of HBO's "Sex and the City," have been fodder for cable hosts and liberal bloggers. Some charge that the parties are actually organized by the usual suspects, big conservative groups such as FreedomWorks, headed by former house majority leader Dick Armey, and not by everyday Joes and Janes. Critics claim that the movement is AstroTurf -- fake grassroots. But for the online right, many of whom have been energized by Obama's presidency in the same way President Bush galvanized the online left, today's tea parties are just one step in building a conservative grassroots movement. To conservative blogger Matt Lewis, who writes for PoliticsDaily.com, today's parties "are just one small step in the right direction." "Look, the online conservative movement, if you compare it to what the liberals have with MoveOn and the like, is still in its infancy," Lewis said in an interview. "And there is no one person, or one organization, controlling it." That movement flexes its new muscles today.
Search Terms:
tea party, tax day tea party, tea parties, tea party locations, boston tea party, tax tea party
References:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/04/15/tea_parties_a_test_of_conserva.html?hpid=topnews,http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-onthemedia15-2009apr15,http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,http://www.sltrib.com/ci_12141958,http://michellemalkin.com/2009/04/15/a-tax-day-tea-party-cheat-sheet-how-it-all-started/
