On a bitterly cold March day, 40 of us braved the elements to hold Rochester, New York’s first Tea Party protest. Governor Patterson was in town, just down the street, and we wanted to let him know we were unhappy about his budget for 2009. New taxes, new fees, and the same old politics as usual in Albany.

We also were angry about the actions of the Obama administration and our elected representatives in Congress. Spending bills had shot through Congress without time for evaluation and consideration, and without any effort to include the Republican minority. Promise after promise that Barry Obama had made during his campaign had already been broken in less than the first 100 days of his administration.

We listened to speakers, sang patriotic songs and marched with our homemade signs. We received a little local press but the leftists demanding tax increases were far more numerous and they received most of the attention.

The dedicated volunteers who put that Tea Party together resolved to join the national movement and hold a second on April 15. It was a workday, but it was also the day income taxes were due to be paid to both New York State and the Federal Government.

A great deal of work went into the April 15 event. The day was sunny, but a cold wind was blowing. That might be seen as a prediction of the future for all Americans if the current policies and trends are not reversed.

We rallied first at a park, and over one thousand strong we marched. A second ralley with speeches was held at the County Office Building. We marched again, to City Hall where the final set of speakers addressed the thousand plus standing there.

Why go to all this trouble? Just what were the concerns of the people who protested at Rochester’s Tea Party?

The protesters came from all over the political spectrum. Amidst those differences, there were some common themes.

We are concerned at the amount of debt that the United States is going to incur, and the tax payments that the next generations will be forced to pay to service that debt.

We are concerned that state and local governments continue to raise taxes and fees.

We believe that government is being conducted in the same old way when it has to change.

We are upset that so many political appointees and politicians are tax cheats and corrupt.

Term limits were a popular subject. Cutting government spending was another.

The people at the Rochester Tea Party were mostly folks that had never been to a protest in their lives. Mark that statement. Never been to a protest. Imagine the anger and worry that would impel these people to come to the Tea Party.

Governments, at all levels, have come to a place where voters and taxpayers feel left out of the process. The people who marched feel that they no longer control the people who are being elected. They are bewildered and anxious about the changes that they have seen in the practice of what is supposed to be a free and democratic political process. Wry jokes were being made about ending up on some government list for being at the Tea Party.

Politicians and bureaucrats routinely ignore most taxpayers and voters. Once you are elected to office, you have an overwhelming chance of staying in office until you choose to leave. If you are a bureaucrat, practicly nothing can be done to remove you from your position or deny you a raise. For the people at the Tea Party, government has become something to distrust, perhaps an enemy, but certainly no friend.

That is not what our Founders intended. This must change and it will change. July 4 is the next set of Tea Parties on the schedule nationally. Between now and then, the movement will grow and July 4 will see Americans exercising their rights like never before and vowing to take back their government.

This is 2009 information.

UPDATE: 4-17-2009 20:00

• 538 reports 306 sites and 262,025 attending
• Pajamas Media reports 617,568 attending
• Jim Geraghty at NRO reports 341,477 attending

UPDATES marked *** and notes on them will follow the table.

The massive number of Tea Party protests held on Tax Day are over. While the counts are unofficial, there are some numbers available.

The city counts for the nationwide Tea Party protests yesterday can be found at Freedom Press. I have used their numbers as of 5:30 yesterday.

Please feel free to check my addition, and totals. I tried to see what Pajamas TV had but their site is blank at this moment. It appears as if this list is short about 250 protests.

NOTES:
Arizona updated by e-mail report.
Arkansas updated from comments.
Georgia updated from comments.
Iowa updated from comments.
Kansas and Missouri updated and corrected from comments.
New Jersey updated from comments.
New York updated by e-mail report.
Rhode Island updated from comments.
South Dakota updated from comments.
Wyoming updated by e-mail report.

The 2010 Tea Party can be found at this link.

One of the signs from the April 15 Tea Party in Rochester, NY

The 40 who braved the cold in March for the Rochester NY Tea Party were joined today by over 1,000 more Americans fed up with politics as usual.

The Geneseo College Republican Club held the traditional tea dump at the April 15 Tea Party protest in Rochester, NY.

It’s sunny and in the 50’s with a brisk wind here in Rochester, NY. Three stops were planned for the Tea Party, a downtown park, the County Office Building and City Hall. About 600 at the park heard speakers and sang songs. They marched down a closed Main Street to the County Building for another rally and grew to around 1,000. By the time the marchers moved to City Hall, the crowd had swelled even further.

One of the signs from the April 15, 2009 Tea Party in Rochester, NY.

The crowd held all races, and every age group from toddlers to the elderly. The Geneseo College Republican Club marched with Ron Paul supporters, Libertarian Party folks, and ordinary Americans at their first protest.

No protest on behalf of liberty would be complete without a Liberty Belle cheering for freedom.

Bob Lonsberry on 1180, WHAM, is covering the event from his window seat on Main.

Rev. Tommy Davis, one of several persons of color at the April 15 Tea Party in Rochester, NY, addresses the crowd.

PRESS

• WXXI – PBS
• R News
• Democrat & Chronicle
• Channel 13 WHAM

Here are the collected photos.

Back when Andrew Sullivan was a conservative, he sent lots of traffic this way with a number of links. So, I feel a certain sadness with his change of perspective over the last few years.

Andrew wrote a piece titled The Tea Tantrum Movement for The Atlantic. It is his take on the Tea Party protest movement based on an admitted hour or so of on-line research.

He professes to have emerged from his rigorous course of research perplexed, bothered and bewildered.

He describes the movement as “some kind of amorphous, generalized rage on the part of those who were used to running the country and now don’t feel part of the culture at all”. He calls it “adolescent, unserious hysteria”.

Andrew makes the error that most liberals insist upon, that this is a movement of the Republican Party. Had he looked at the existing documentation of the hundreds of Tea Parties already held, he would have clearly seen that the movement is made up of some very average people, people who have never “run” the country. Perhaps he did look, but chose not to engage his intellect.

He even manages to make a serious historical error. The men who conducted the original Tea Party were NOT illegal immigrants, but Englishmen fed up with having their rights trampled by a distant government.

That is the bone of contention for Americans today. Our government has grown distant and is failing to respect our rights, the rights we have enjoyed from the founding of this nation.

Andrew needed to come up with a few hundred words for his paying gig, so he slapped something on the wall with the hope it would stick. It’s brown, and sticky, and smells. I would have hope for a little more reflection and honesty from a man who I once admired.

April 15 will see over 500 Tea Party protests being held nationwide. During the run-up to this important date, we have read a number of news stories about the roadblocks that local governments have placed in the way of these peaceful protests.

The permit requirement seems to be the typical means of suppressing free speech. In the guise of “protecting” the protestors and the community, the permitting process lays a number of difficult to negotiate steps in front of any wou8ld-be protest organizer.

The first impediment is that you must be an “organization”. In many communities, you and I cannot go out and get a permit to parade, or hold a rally. By requiring an “organization” sponsor the event, the locality places a burden on free speech.

Liability insurance is another requirement that impedes a Tea Party. Many communities require this for an event, and a $1 million policy is a common requirement. This is another attempt to shut down a protest through spurious claims of “protecting” the public. It is the local government’s duty to protect the public, not that of the event organizers.

A popular means of curtailing protest is to require a permit weeks in advance of the event. Four weeks is often used, and six weeks in advance is not uncommon. Our request to protest a governmental action that happened today would be denied. This is the “maybe they’ll forget about it” portion of the event permitting process.

Rutland, Vermont tried a unique approach to derailling the Tea Party scheduled for that small city. They denied a special event permit based upon unwritten and rarely communicated “official” policies. The protest organizer followed all of the written procedures and was approved right down the line. Then his application was brought to the Board of Aldermen for a vote, unannounced, and was voted down.

Fortunately, everyone involved in Rutland seems to feel that the Tea Party can go on as scheduled. The vote of the Board has no effect, since even the alderman seem unclear as to what the result of their vote ought to be. Which is more dangerous, a politician or a confused politician?

As you organize your Tea Parties, or attend your local protest, remember that your local governments set obsticles in the way of you exercising your Constitutional rights of assembly, free speech and seeking redress from the government.