Why isn't there a blue-collar/middle class "tea-party"-like movement?

[brentspeak]

Why aren't average, increasingly squeezed working class people forming their own grassroots movements to protest being financially terrorized by Wall Street and their corporate politician enablers? Why aren't large groups of people demanding that government do its job to protect them from predatory financiers and the various deep-pocketed vultures who fund the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which pushes for job-killing trade policies, among other things)?

[notesdev]

1. That is what the tea partiers are doing

Media spin aside, most of the people at those protests had the exact same complaints as you voice here.

[Skittles]

3. except they didn't care until Obama was elected

[cali]

4. any evidence for that claim? It's sure not what I see.

and it's not what's being voiced by teabaggers online.

[brentspeak]

7. Where? Who? Sources?

Quote some tea-partiers during their protests who were pushing for government to a) crack down on Wall Street squeezing people with high interest rates; b) prevent Wall Street from crushing Main Street; c) prevent American jobs from being shipped out-of-the country wholesale.

I have checked out some conservative sites, and some people on those sites are aware that China and our inane trade policies are destroying the U.S. That's a reassuring thing to see -- but I don't see those complaints brought to the tea-parties. All I see are "keep the government from imposing 'socialism' on us", even though the opposite is actually happening (corporate fascism).

[notesdev]

15. Here's an interesting video

This is from last April, when these things started. It's a tea party crowd booing and humiliating Scott Garrett, a rock-ribbed, totally solid Republican in South Carolina. When you think "conservative republican", this guy is what you visualize.

Anyway, here they are tearing him a new asshole because he voted for TARP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QsY2r7HbTM


Now, you got to watch out for what political sites say since this is a high-impact political movement, so everyone has an interested spin on the matter. So I don't believe it when Palin claims to be a tea partier (I think they'd eat her alive over her plans to campaign for McCain) or the GOP claims affinity for them (an unrequited love, for sure).

Ask yourself what the powers that be would do with respect to a political movement that seriously threatened the status quo. They'd demonize, marginalize it, try to split it up and divert it.

What people don't seem to realize is that "tea party" (or "teabagger", if you prefer) is a completely disposable name. It doesn't matter what you label it or call it. What matters is the anger in peoples' hearts at the way DC and Wall Street are playing an inside game with our chips and guaranteeing that we (meaning the average nonpolitical person) will be the losing party in any outcome. That anger is repeatedly rising to the surface because it's not a function of any ideology or movement, it's a function of basic human nature. People know they are being wronged, stolen from, and treated like shit, all facilitated by the very government that should be there to protect them.

That's the fundamental issue here. The average voter is not nearly as stupid as Washington DC takes him for and knows he is getting raked over the coals. With the economy spiraling into Depression, there's no more give to be given, no more blood for banks and governments to suck out of the middle class. The tea parties are one manifestation of the inevitable push back when you put people up against the wall.

[brentspeak]

16. Actually, they're booing Gresham Barrett

Scott Garrett, who's is a Republican and who's actually my own representative, voted against TARP -- though I have no doubt he would have voted for it under pressure from Republican leaders had his been the deciding vote.

[leftstreet]

17. Here are some SCARY tea party protest signs

[truedelphi]

22. My RW neighbor voted for Obama, and was patiently

Waiting to see what would happen regarding the financial markets.

Then when he saw how Geithner was installed at Treasury, while Bernanke was given Obama's approval, he became distrustful of this Administration.

Now he is a lost cause, as he will spout anything he is told at one of those meetings.

But for a few weeks leading up to the Nov 2008, he and I were on the same page.

And I dislike Geithner/Bernanke as much as he does.

[Hello_Kitty]

11. They think Barney Frank and ACORN caused the economic collapse.

It was them evul libruls what made the banks write loans to unworthy darkies.

[villager]

2. too beat down and afraid? Still imagining they can effect change "within the system?"

n/t

[omega minimo]

5. Could it be because the "Teabaggers" were fabricated by phonies?

[msongs]

6. teabaggers = republican party sponsored fear of a black president racists nt

[Better Believe It]

8. Because the labor movement and other movements are not organizing one.

The various "movements" need to get together and organize united mass actions .... picketlines, marches, big rallies and other effective direct actions to put heat on the politicians and to take things into our own hands when possible.

[SoCalDem]

9. Most "middle classers" are too busy schlepping kids in and out of daycare,

driving to and from job to job, doing laundry until midnight, and yard-work& chores all day every day off...and most are living paycheck to paycheck with NO "extra" money to pay $550 for a chicken dinner & a clucking-hen speech. Most "middlers" use their "extra" money to coax an extra year of live out of their 12 yr old cars, and to try & keep their families healthy.. They have no "extra" time or money to follow the "evangelists" around.

[kywildcat]

13. yip!

[LostInAnomie]

10. There's no such thing as a class consciousness in the US.

Believe it or not, a huge portion of the white collar middle class thinks they are better than their blue collar counterparts. Even though they have essentially the same economic concerns, and in many cases are on even more treacherous footing as far as economic well-being, they still view themselves as superior to the people that work with their hands and create things with their labor. They've bought into the management vs labor construct.

Many of them aren't going to give a shit about jobs being outsourced because it doesn't directly effect them or their jobs. Many of them aren't going to give a shit about trade policies because they benefit from the cheap prices. Until it really starts hitting them and they find out that they aren't immune from the dark side of Capitalism, they aren't going to team up with labor.

[Better Believe It]

12. That can change very, very quickly based on past American history.

But it won't happen automatically without some help from those groups and individuals who understand it's about class.

Many radicals of the mid-30's had voted for Herbert Hoover in 1932!

[David Zephyr]

14. You are on to something. Why the hell don't the unions organize teaparties for the working class?

I think your idea has legs.

[leftstreet]

18. +1

[Avalux]

19. People who fit in your category don't have time for a movement.

They live paycheck to paycheck; can barely make their house payment (or may be in foreclosure); wonder if they'll still have a job next week. In spite of that, the own an HD TV and spend all their free time in front of it, being lulled into ignorance.

A movement is the last thing on their minds and the least thing they want to do with their free time.

[KonaKane]

20. They would be gunned down.

Pure and simple. This nation would never be able to handle a real peoples' movement like that. They only tolerate it when it comes from the fringes of the right, because they know in the end that the rightist's agenda favors the rich power elite.

[brentspeak]

21. I resist conspiracy theories, but

I have to admit that if someone would, in today's America, try to be the next Eugene V. Debs, and demonstrated some success as such, he or she would be targeted by the powers-that-be in a second flat. Maybe not violently, but they'd find themselves audited, or their job terminated, or slandered in the press, etc.

[drm604]

23. Because there are no moneyed interests interested in supporting such a movement,

unlike the tea party astroturfers.

[David Zephyr]

24. Second Kick.

This is something constructive.

I like it.

A worker's rally!

Working people of America unite!