Michelle Malkin has an excellent primer for the Tax Day Tea Party protests detailing the history of the movement. Here is the short version, go to her blog to get the longer version with links and pictures:
Feb. 15: Keli Carender, who blogs as “Liberty Belle” spread the word about a grass-roots protest she was organizing in Seattle to raise her voice against the passage of the trillion-dollar stimulus/porkulus/Generational Theft Act of 2009.
Feb. 16: An energetic crowd of about 100 people came downtown to lambaste the Chicken Little process and the lard-up of the stimulus bill:
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Word of the Seattle protest spread across the blogosphere. Readers suggested there should be a Denver protest on Feb. 17 to greet President Obama for the porkulus signing. Separately, the local chapter of Americans for Prosperity was already working to put something together on the fly.
On Feb. 18, 500 fed-up taxpayers showed up in Mesa, AZ to oppose President Obama’s campaign for massive expansions of the government mortgage entitlement and to mock what SC Gov. Mark Sanford rightly called savior-based economics. No top-down organization. Just the effort of local talk radio station KFYI.
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On Feb. 19, reader Amanda Grosserode e-mailed that she was organizing a tax revolt protest in Overland Park, KS the following weekend. More than 400 people showed up in freezing weather to protest Rep. Dennis Moore’s vote for the bill. Glenn Reynolds did the reporting the MSM didn’t do.
On Feb. 19, CNBC’s Rick Santelli issued his now-famous “Tea Party” call — prompted, many people forget, by Obama’s mortgage entitlement expansion plans (proposals I’ve protested whether from Democrats or moron Republicans):
David Hogberg of Investor’s Business Daily was the first MSM reporter to cover the burgeoning tax revolt protests. Here’s an excerpt of what Hogberg wrote on Feb. 20:
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On Feb. 21, the grass-roots Internet group, Top Conservatives on Twitter, founded by Michael Patrick Leahy and powered by Rob Neppell, announced “simultaneous local tea parties around the country, beginning in Chicago, and including Washington DC, Fayetteville NC, San Diego CA, Omaha Nebraska, and dozens of other locations” on Feb. 27. Patrik Jonsson of the Christian Science Monitor was one of the rare national MSM reporters who attended one of the tea parties (Atlanta) and provided a fair and balanced look at protesters mad at both parties:
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An Internet-based coalition spearheaded by TCOT, Smart Girl Politics, and the DontGoMovement formed to coordinate today’s Tax Day Tea Party. It is a totally unprecedented phenomenon that no Beltway GOP guru or elected leader can claim credit for.
Rock on! To all those taking part in their local protests, give em’ hell! Send your pictures our way or paste em’ into the comment sections….the people need to cover these protests seeing as how our media won’t.
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