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Port Orchard, WA
I’m not 100% sure what motivated me to drive 45 miles to attend a protest that I not only didn’t believe in, but had mocked pretty openly as the date approached. I think a part of me didn’t honestly want to believe that the people of my own home town, quiet and proud folk all, could be moved to follow what I considered to be a ludicrously wrong minded protest based on a false metaphor. I had to see the thing for myself and until I pulled up to that intersection I fully expected it to be empty when I arrived. It was not empty.
In fact, there were many more people there than I had expected. I didn’t count heads, but by estimate there were at least 30 but no more than 50 in attendance. Demographic was about what one would expect from a almost wholly Republican protest, though there were a few exceptions, and I was surprised to see a couple of what I suspect were working class families holding signs opposing taxation increases as well.
This being my first journalistic endeavor since High School, I decided to keep it simple. I crafted 8 questions I was going to pose to as many people as would let me interview them. I went back and forth with my wife all day about the questions I was going to ask. This whole “Tea Party” concept was such the subject of my ire recently that I didn’t want to approach anyone as a confrontational “liberal insurgent” bent on making fun of them or showing contempt for their opinions. I composed my questions carefully and even scrapped a couple on the fly because I could feel myself wanting to refute, rebut, and debate with them about their answers, but this was not my purpose. My purpose was to explore and learn, find out what those on the ground thought and felt unfiltered by either side of the media spectrum and find out why they were really there.
The first thing I have to say is that this was no Boston Tea Party, what went on was really just your good old fashioned Tax Day Protest. The people who came out were just those who felt they deserved to keep what they earned. The vast majority of them said they were there because they listened to Beck, Limbaugh, Savage, or the like, but all did so with what was a degree of either embarrassment or shame. There were also those who watched Fox news and one lady even went as far as to say that she did so because she liked her news “true and unfiltered”. However, one pair, an elderly lady and a woman of such an age I assumed her to be her daughter, said that they had heard of it from a friend word of mouth, opposed the stimulus spending President Obama signed into law, believed the only way to pay for that spending was to raise taxes and opposed that vehemently regardless of the targeted group of citizens. If it weren’t for these two I think I would still refer to the people in attendance at these protests as “Tea Baggers”. Now the label seems kind of offensive.
These two were about the only departure from the meme induced predisposition I had regarding the attitudes and motivations of those in attendance. When asked about the appropriateness of the “Tea Party” metaphor, almost all felt it was apropos, but were want to tell me how it fit other than the subject was taxation. A tall man whose demeanor pegged him, at least to me, as a serving or retired military officer put it best when he said it was a symbol of solidarity that everyone could get behind. Pragmatic and true, a position I have to respect. The most interesting response came from a woman who said “our interests aren’t being represented in Washington”. The connection between her sentiment and the intentions of the original tea party are tenuous at best. Being in the minority is not the same as being denied representation wholesale. It took all of my willpower not to argue that with her.
Along these lines, I also asked a few how they felt about the implication that “Tea Parties” meant that the next step was violent revolution. Not surprisingly, everyone I asked said that played no part in their motivations to attend the protest. This is a point that I wish their media leaders, and even as of today some political leaders, would get. None of us want violent revolution, so please stop bringing it up.
The big question, the one I think everyone wants to know about every protest, is what exactly the protesters hope to accomplish through their actions. The answers were neither diverse nor surprising. Most just felt their presence would help to bring attention to the fact that they think Washington is spending too much money we don’t have. This is really the only true expectable outcome of a protest. I did run across a couple who hoped the protest would stir into action those who were letting this happen, but I am uncertain who exactly she was talking about. The tall gentleman said that he hoped this would bring about electoral change come 2010, then in 2012, a position I could have respected had he not also said “or maybe even later this year”.
This was a most interesting excursion, and I learned a great deal. Foremost among what I learned is that there is an enormous disparity between how the people of the right and left are portrayed to each other through the eyes of the media and the reality of what we are like as individuals, and even groups. I talked to a bunch of friendly people with valid points of view that were more than willing to talk to me and be honest, even suspecting I was a “liberal insurgent”. All were exactly what I would have expected to find on that corner in my home town on any given other day, and I was treated exactly as I would have expected. This makes me think that the division between us, right/left, liberal/conservative, or whatever, is something that is being driven there by those who might want to see us separated to whatever personal ends they may have. I think this should be a stark warning to those of us on both sides that just because something appears that way all cut together on the screen, it may not translate that way when applied to the people in your own home town.
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