Fort Wayne Tea Party Draws a Crowd
Alan Keyes Encourages Crowd to Keep Our Nation Free and Brave
The sun was shining and the temperature was a comfortable 70 degrees for Fort Wayne's Tea Party against excessive taxation. The crowd was large, although how large depends on who you ask. I heard a speaker at the rally estimate the crowd at 5,000; online news reports say "hundreds," and I, being an eyewitness, would estimate 2,000.
The rally was held on the courthouse green, and was from 11-2 on Saturday afternoon (which makes more sense to me than the more numerous April 15 "tax day" parties; after all, aren't most participants working then?). The lawn was filled when my family arrived shortly before 11. The crowd included young and old, many with a variety of clever homemade signs. Unfortunately, the crowd was mainly white: although I specifically looked, I saw just two blacks (a man and his son), and no Hispanics, although Fort Wayne has plentiful quantities of both. What to make of that? I suppose either those groups did not care enough to come out and support the cause, or they're unsupportive.
What cause might that be? Lowering taxes and less government involvement in general were the themes of the speeches given, as well as the themes of most posters displayed. There were few signs mentioning Obama, and other than hearing a brief quip about his missing birth certificate in Dr. Keyes' speech, he was not mentioned either. Politicians of all parties were skewered for their free-spending ways.
A variety of speakers took to the podium (I suppose there was a podium, although to be honest we could not get close enough to tell. If one existed, it was not sufficiently tall for most attendees to see) before Dr. Keyes began his speech at 12:15. He lived up to his reputation as an excellent speaker, leading the crowd to outrage by touting various governmental spending sprees, and reminding us of our nation's founders and their ideals.
What type of nation will we have to leave to the generations after us? It was a question he asked of the crowd, and one that is well worth pondering as our country goes through a period of rapid change.
I was impressed by the conduct of the crowd. The few policemen stationed in nearby cars had a quiet morning as I saw no incidents of unruly behavior. The participants were friendy and polite. Many children were in the crowd, some with signs they had made. Other people brought pets. Attendees along the roads held up signs for oncoming traffic to see, and many vehicles honked in support.
It was a wonderful day for an event designed to celebrate our nation's liberty and to inspire us to keep it.
Published by Susan Braun - Featured Contributor in Arts & Entertainment
Susan Braun is a freelance writer with special interests in education, the arts and music. She freelances for several sites, and is one of Associated Content s Top 1000 Sources for each year from 2008 to 201... View profile
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13 Comments
Post a CommentWow, Patriot - cut taxes from WHERE? Are you kidding me? I would slash the federal budget drastically - welfare, education, foreign aid, cut various cabinet posts and federal agencies. I believe the federal government is WAY bigger than ever intended. It costs more and does more than it needs to. I say CUT IT WAY BACK!
What specific taxes need cut?! It's nice to simply say, "Cut taxes," but from where? I'm tired of seeing folks waving the flag and stating "I'm a patriot." That means nothing to me. Show me YOUR PLAN for change. Talk is cheap. We've heard decades of it. This guys are no different that the earlier ones who claimed to want to cut spending.
I'm really proud of those people at the tea party!! Thanks, Susan!
Unfortunately no one has come up with a better solution...just paid my $800 tax bill.
Great article, Susan! Too bad all the tea party people are now getting classified as "dangerous domestic terrorists"!
Hi Michelle -
Thanks for commenting; I assume you were there? I don't mean to make it about race at all; it was honestly sad to me that I didn't see more races represented. You make a great point about the speaker. I totally believe you about the other participants. It's just that I wasn't close enough to see :)
ROB - I oppose government spending, whichever party is doing it. I was no fan of GWB's excessive spending either, believe me.
Where were all of you patriots when we were spending billions monthly in Iraq? This was about as non-partisan as the annual GOP bean dinner. You can blame the current administration all you want but they aren't the ones that landed us here. They aren't the ones that got us into a war that, by the end of FY2010 will have cost us $1.03 Trillion with a capital T and more importantly 4000+ American lives. Where were the protesting patriots while all of this was happening? That Trillion + sure would come in handy now wouldn't it?
(Continued from post below) spread throughout our land.
Also, you missed a very key point here by failing to mention that not only was our keynote speaker black, but so was one of the two organizers, the other organizer's son is bi-racial. The anthem was sung by an African-American young man, and the pledge of allegiance was led by a bi-racial teenager. So, who turned out in the back of the crowd, I couldn't see that far back, but the stage was VERY diverse! Please stop making this a race issue, it has nothing to do with race!
I appreciate the article and it is well written and did a good job of being honest about most things, however you did forget some very important things and got some other things wrong that I would like to clear up. The protest was and is against SPENDING and BIG GOVERNMENT. We have no problem paying our fair share of taxes and we see the importance of having government, however the administrations both now and several previously, have grown our government to outlandish size and spending at an alarming rate. The spending is often on things the general public doesn't want, need or care about (honey bee hives, butterfly farms, funding abortions, the list is endless) and our money is forced out of our hands as well as the hands of our children and grandchildren. This is diminshing the value of our dollar and the fact that the government now wants to have control over industries is just wrong, and unconstitutional. The problem is a morality problem growing in government and spread thro
I must admit that when I reluctantly sent in my $1,000 tax payment I was wondering how some bank executive was going to enjoy his $1,000 bonus. Great article!