TEA Party Patriots: Don't Go Home, Fight!

Before there were TEA Party activists, there were Freepers. Through my experience as a long-time Freeper, I learned the value of street activism, and its limitations.

Capitol Confidential, in an essay posted at Big Government Monday, emphatically urges TEA Party activists to stop demonstrating and focus on local politics instead. I strongly disagree.

It is necessary to do both–and in fact it is being done all across the country.

When I was living in Washington, D.C., I helped the D.C. Chapter of FreeRepublic.com and other groups organize hundreds of protests, counter-demonstrations and several rallies. I also was an adviser for the Sept. 12 march on Washington.

Even though we didn’t draw huge crowds like the TEA Parties have this year, during my decade-plus of involvement I have witnessed conservative street activism rack up impressive victories.

Among them: President Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998; in 2000 the Second Amendment Sisters crushed the Million Mom March and turned back the gun-control movement; also in 2000 Vice President Al Gore was prevented from stealing the presidential election and was driven out of ‘Cheney’s house’; from 2001 to the present troop supporters prevented the left from bringing about home front defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan as was done with Vietnam while standing up to anti-American agitators to stop a repeat of the abuse heaped on soldiers from the Vietnam war; in 2004-2005, the Minuteman movement rose up to protest rampant illegal immigration, fighting back repeated attempts to pass amnesty for illegal aliens, forcing the government to step up enforcement and to do more to secure the borders.

These battles were fought on many fronts but they all had one thing in common: people took to the streets and they stayed in the streets.

While taking to the streets is not the solution to every political trouble, it is an essential part of our arsenal that should not be discarded just as our side is motivated and has learned how to do it effectively.

Public demonstrations, when done right, are force multipliers. They encourage others to get involved, bolster current leaders and create new ones while sapping the morale of opponents.

Media coverage of the demonstrations by traditional and new media has been key to making the TEA Party a nationwide movement. The media had something to cover because people were doing something that resonated with the public. Stop doing demonstrations entirely and the movement will be blunted.

Capitol Confidential seems to have forgotten that the TEA Parties were initially organized locally and did not involve marches on Washington until the movement was well grounded. The April 15th Tax Day protests involved upwards of a million TEA Partiers at approximately 900 rallies across the country.

Since then, there has been only one major march on Washington and two ’emergency’ protests. While we should be wary of overdoing marches on Washington, we are nowhere near that point. It is a sign of their success that President Barack Obama and the Democrats organize events to counter the TEA Party marches on Washington.

I wholeheartedly agree that TEA Party activists should get involved in local politics and stay involved. We are in the fight of our lifetimes for the future of our Nation. It will require lifetime commitments from all of us.

The Left has been relentless in their drive to subvert America, we must match and best their efforts.

Conservatives have long disdained street activism. Many of them look down on it as something dirty and demeaning. From personal experience over the years I’ve seen how uplifting, empowering and effective it can be. This year, millions of conservatives and libertarians have shared that experienced and found it exhilarating.

Why, when so many are motivated for the first time in their lives to take a public stand, are we so quick to tell them to put down their Gadsden flags and go home?

I am confident in the ability of the TEA Party movement to ‘think nationally and act locally’. Fight on my fellow patriots.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill after Dunkirk, we shall fight in the Capitol, we shall fight in our hometowns, we shall fight in the statehouses and town councils, we shall fight in the streets, we shall never surrender.