We had a Tea Party protest in Coos bay on April 15th (tax day) 2010, where about 200 people demonstrated. I participated, and had a great time. The weather cooperated and we had a sunny afternoon protest against runaway taxation, creeping (or should I say “leaping”) socialism, and infringement on our God-given rights by the idiots in Washington and Salem.
There were several candidates who spoke; none were from major parties. Among the crowd, there seemed to be almost as much resentment of RINO’s as there were of Democrats. As one speaker pointed out, the mood of the demonstrators was, “We’re mad as hell and not going to take it any more.”
What amazes me is the support that those driving by always show, honking, waving and yelling their support when they see the demonstration in progress.
We were alerted (I get emails from several Tea Party groups) that there might be infiltrators. I didn’t expect to see any here, but there was one Obama supporter among the hundreds of conservatives. Occasionally he would yell out some nonsense about everything being “Lies”, and he got incensed when one of the speakers referred to him as “dressed like a twelve-year-old and likely unemployed”. (See last photo below.) He started heckling speakers then. Pretty much what you’d expect. He got in a few heated conversations with individuals, but nobody tarred and feathered him (while I was there anyway) and he was mostly ignored.
The crowd was cheerful and upbeat about the coming November elections. People I talked to were confident that the Tea Party candidates running in Oregon could give our liberal congressman DeFazio a shellacking in the election.
We’ll see.
Here are some photos:
This idiot was the sole supporter of Obama in a crowd of about 200 Tea Party protesters.
Rob made a mistake by not giving the guy the mike. He would have destroyed himself, just like Staggenborg did on July 4th.
We hauled our 4×8 Declaration from Reedsport down to Coos Bay. You can see some of the shots on our site.
Idiots. I wish people would do some research before spewing their misinformed rhetoric. Obama does not equal socialism, and socialism doesn’t mean authoritarian NAZI. I am disappointed that so many people in our country have no clue about political theory, yet go out, yell and scream about taxes and socialism.
Matt –
Well, that’s your opinion, which to my view seems woefully misinformed. Government control of all industry through regulation and ownership (think GM) is one of the hallmarks of both Socialism and the Nazis.
There’s an old political saying that goes, “Scratch a socialist and you’ll find a Nazi.” Most of the psuedo-intellectuals I’ve met who are socialists have grand schemes for making things “better” for the masses, while making things worse for the individual. It’s the details of enforcement of their schemes that separate the socialists from the Nazis.
The passage of Obamacare has awakened a lot of people (who were either ignoring politics or apathethic about it) to the true costs of creeping socialism in this country, and how it will impact their income, their savings, their own health care, and their freedoms. I look forward to the repeal of, and de-funding of, the myriad of government-run programs put in place by Obama and Pelosi after the next round of elections in November.