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'Tea Parties' Protesting Big Government Are Being Planned Across Country for April 15
By Mark Anderson
ORLANDO, Florida—On March 21, an estimated
5,000 people
gathered around the Lake Eola amphitheater in Orlando, Fla., “to send a message
to the government that they are not going to tolerate any more of what they
called ‘wasteful Washington
spending.’ ”
That snippet from a brief
online report by Cable News 13 TV in central Florida touches on an event put on
by the modern-day “Tea Party” movement that has been “steeping” while piratical
corporate bailouts and stimulus packages reaching into the trillions of dollars
shock ever-larger numbers of Americans into some level of action. While Orlando was one of the
bigger events in recent weeks, scores of other “Tea Party” rallies were planned
for tax day on April 15 as the next edition of the print version of American Free Press goes to press.
From Kalamazoo, Mich., to McAllen,
Tex., to Washington D.C.—three places where AFP expects to send correspondents—and
in most or all of the other states, some sort of April 15 tea party rally, from
small to large events, was in the final planning stages during April’s first
week.
Thus, rather than surrender to the two-headed big banking/big government
beast that is eating them alive, the American people—with more time on their
hands due to unemployment or under-employment—are getting busy trying to come
up with strategies to at least slow the onslaught and buy time so more creative
solutions can come forth.
More communities, for example, are trying local currencies that, while
there is no guarantee that they will last long or work perfectly, usually
function reasonably well if they get off the ground—while sending the general
message that the mysterious monetary system that we all use but none of us
choose does not work the way it should.
“We really focused on patriotism,” Lisa Feroli, one of just four citizens
who planned the big Orlando
rally, told AFP on April 9. She and her cohorts—ignored by the local corporate
newspapers and television stations in terms of advance publicity—hit the talk
radio shows and used the internet and word of mouth to raise $5,500 in four
weeks to pay for the amphitheater rental, insurance, the sound system and
security and their rally. They had a color guard, honored their military
veterans and focused on “what made our nation a great place to live,” she said.
There were some “End the Fed,” Fair Tax, 9-11 truth and various other
groups in Orlando, according to Ms. Feroli, who added: “There were a lot of Ron
Paul [groups]—a lot of Libertarian groups, and a lot of Republicans, and a
couple people came up with Obama shirts and people were booing them out of
there.”
Notably, there are concerns bouncing around online that some Republicans
will make this tea party movement an anti-Democrat issue as opposed to the
bigger picture of opposing unconstitutional government no matter, which party
runs Congress or the White House.
Even as more local currencies of varying quality and scope take root and
supplement the economy at the local level, many Americans have been sending, or
thinking about sending, tea bags to Washington,
not the loose-leaf stuff due to the D.C. mentality that any substance that
looks even remotely out of place must have come from terrorists. How many tea
bags may be sent is hard to determine precisely—Feroli has no idea—and it’s too
soon to predict if this will truly get politicians’ attention, or if the tea
bags will just be treated as “spit wads against the side of a battleship,” so
to speak.
Those in Orlando,
however, have been using a printable sheet off the group’s website—OrlandoTeaParty.com—that
shows a tea bag icon and lists the group’s grievances. The actual sheet states,
in total:
We,
the participants of The Orlando Tea Party, demand that the officials elected by us live up
to your oath to serve us! We demand that you uphold the Constitutional rights
granted to us by our founding fathers, the liberties that have made America the
most extraordinary nation in the world. We demand that you cease further
government spending on Stimulus scams and Bailouts meant to punish those who
contribute the most to our economy and provide jobs to 70% of American workers.
And we demand that you allow the free market to flush years of accumulated
trash from our economy and return prosperity and growth to our markets. With
this statement, I vow that I will attend every election and will steadfastly
vote AGAINST any candidate that does not vote to uphold these demands. I refuse
to simply settle for the “lesser of two evils” and expect my candidate to vote
in favor of these basic American principles every time. We are ready to reclaim
control of our government!
Sincerely,
Orlando Tea Party Participant
Feroli feels any actual tea bags sent in might be immediately thrown away
due to the beltway’s anti-terrorism measures. A New Hampshire dentist, incredibly, was
reportedly arrested just for sending a tea bag to his congressional
representative, Carol Shea-Porter.
Though rallies come and go, and it’s not always easy to tell how effective
they are, one can detect that despite being defrocked of every last shred of
dignity, and disenfranchised and abused beyond comprehension, there is
something in the American psyche that wants out of “the matrix” comprised of
colossal federal spending and many other relentless abuses and towering
injustices.
This ruinous binge-spending goes hand in hand with the government’s
propensity to enslave the American people with perpetual, un-payable debt, much
of which is borne of the government’s almost century-old practice of giving
government bonds to the Federal Reserve System in exchange for (in other words,
in order to purchase) our own money from the Fed, at interest, when the
government’s Treasury Department could create our money debt-free and cut “the
Fed” out of the deal. Why buy money when you can make it?
Feroli, however, noted that she is not aware of a local currency movement
in her area. Still, more such movements have sprung up in Milwaukee,
Wis.; South
Bend, Ind., and a
number of other towns, though not always successfully.
Critics, such as noted monetary
author Stephen Zarlenga, believe that such a movement is a distraction.
Zarlenga said that if those pursuing local currencies would focus on the need
for national currency reform by returning to a debt-free national currency
(thereby dropping Federal Reserve Notes) then the right kind of changes might
happen reasonably soon while there is still time to rescue the economy.
Other authors, such as Ellen Brown, see the local currency movement not as
a solution but a promising sign that people are starting to sense where the
economic trouble ultimately stems from—the monetary system specifically, not
just an abstraction called “the economy.” Thus, the problem is not simply too
much government spending. It runs much deeper than that, according to these and
other authors who have been working overtime to try and bring the deeper issues
to the American people.
See the complete
Orlando
statement by clicking here.
Mark Anderson is the corresponding editor for American Free Press. Write to Mark at [email protected]
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