TEA PARTY - A YEAR LATER

I cannot believe that it’s been a year since my first Tea Party. To think that this all started with a rant by Rick Santelli on CNBC, calling for a Chicago Tea Party, and here we are, a year later, still strong and getting stronger. I remember last February, getting out of the car with my mom and the kids, walking over to the bar in Fort Worth, not knowing what to expect. I had joined the We Surround Them meet up group on Meetup.com and a few days later someone said hey, we should have a tea party protest. We didn’t know what it meant, all we knew was we were sick and tired of being ignored and we wanted to do something. We all knew we were going to watch the Glenn Beck show on March 13, that was the point of the Meet up group, but this was different, this was separate. The next thing you know it’s being talked about on Michelle Malkin's blog. This little bar in Fort Worth was having a protest, a “tea party”, to let the White House know what we thought of all this spending. Suddenly, there are posts from all around the country, "We’re going to have one out here in LA", "Anyone meeting up in Detroit?". I watched as people got together, new websites sprung up to try to keep them all organized, and suddenly, Feb. 27 was a day that everyone around the nation would protest together, but far apart. No one covered it. Fox news didn’t talk about it. Glenn Beck wasn’t even sure if it was a good idea, that maybe it was too soon, or what was the true purpose. But slowly, as the day came closer, I saw more and more people on blogs talking about it. In comments on newspaper websites, in comments on YouTube, on MySpace and Facebook, in posts put up by individuals; all of a sudden we had a name and a date.

We were so excited standing there at the bar, outside on the street, listening to people speak about what we could do to take back our country. It wasn’t vicious, it wasn’t racial, it was people saying the things that my family talked about over dinner. Our anger at the last 8 years of Bush. How we stopped amnesty from happening just barely because of talk radio. How we called our congressmen over and over again, asking them NOT to pass TARP. And when the new stimulus bill came up under Obama, we did the same thing, to no avail. It was like we weren’t even there. And yet, here I was, surrounded by people who watched the same news I did, who were politically savvy and knew their history as well as current events. There were inside jokes, names being brandied about that at any other event would get you looks like you’d just sprouted a new head. But here, these people got it. They knew who Barney Frank was, called Pelosi a princess, and even held up signs “You are not alone” and understood what that meant. Up until that day, we were so frightened, believing that the government would pass everything, from Cap and Trade to Health Care and that we had no choice but to sit down and shut up. Because the Government was too big and the American people had a short attention span. When Glenn said “We’ll meet back up on 9-12” we screamed “NO! It’ll be too late by then! The American people will just acquiesce and take it like they have for the last 50 years!” But on that day in February, we had hope. And then we had another Tea Party in April and all of a sudden, we were a “movement”. We were a “group. That one was covered and the media couldn’t ignore us, even if they tried to demonize us. Then in July I went to a Tea Party that had 25,000 people in Dallas, with Michelle Malkin being the keynote speaker and I thought WOW! This is AWESOME!. Then there were the Town hall mobs and people speaking out and inside we knew, maybe we really COULD make a difference. Finally we met on 9/12, and after that massive march on WA, which seems to only exist in our minds, we had the elections in Virginia and NJ. If you asked me a year ago would there be something called the ‘Scott Brown Phenomenon” I would’ve called you crazy. I just didn’t believe that the passion was sustainable.

And yet, here we are, February 2010. I just returned from attending another Tea Party, which has now become a part of our lexicon, and we’ve successfully halted health care and Cap and Trade, and the November elections are just over the horizon. I think to myself, what a glorious people we are to defy the odds, like our Founding Fathers before us, to keep the momentum going, to keep the passion for liberty and freedom alive and burning. If they did it with no internet or TV or telephones and were able to defeat the greatest army on earth, imagine what we could do as a group of people with the advantages we have! One of my favorite fiction authors, Julie Garwood, had her hero say “One whisper, …added to a thousand others will become a roar of discontent.” I’ve though about that statement many times in my life and it’s true. To make change, one must be willing to stand up and take the fall. When I walked into that bar in Feb. 2009 I knew I was willing to fall. Not like my forefathers, who knew they were signing away their lives and family by declaring Independence. But I was willing to fall in my own right; to falter, to be attacked and belittled, to be disregarded and ignored, to be demonized and oppressed. The pain that is to come is worth it. Freedom is worth it. And the words still echo in my ears. Don’t. Tread. On. Me