St. Louis Tea Party 2009
By Mark A. Polege
Black Oak Presents - Summer 2009
My name is Mark Polege and I too am one of those, like millions, affected by the economic changes in our country. A few days before Thanksgiving I was laid off from a web design position with a small company in O’Fallon, Illinois. Needing to instantly sink or swim, I began to kick up my freelance photography & web design business in an effort to recover from this job loss. While on my daily routine of online marketing, networking, & researching, I read about the Tea Party protests in Chicago and down here in downtown St. Louis on the riverfront in late February.
Despite some reports, the organizers here were mainly local involving a St. Louis radio talk show host from FOX Radio 97.1 FM Talk, Dana Loesch & local business owner, Bill Hennessy with the help of such social networks as Facebook. I was not in attendance, however the whole thing got me thinking about what recourse we have for the decisions taking place in Washington D.C. without our consent.
After the Tea Parties what little I heard through the major media networks was quite negative, all except for FOX News. Yet our local news here had no stories on protesters being arrested, no stories on riots, and nothing about any extremist type behavior at all. I found it interesting that this same media that has gone out of their way to cover protesters for the environment, for example, had little coverage of a group like this.
The Media usually loves protesters, American’s right to protest and all. This is when I decided to see things for myself and made sure I attended the Tax Day Tea Party in St. Louis. Something Bill Hennessy wrote in one of his blogs really got me thinking, “we can’t rely on the major media to accurately report these events so bring your cameras & video cameras.” I took this as a call to action to do my small part in showing our events here in St. Louis and try to spread those photos to anyone with an email box. The Media vilifies these events and the current Congress and Administration downplays them so it falls on all of us to promote & accurately cover them.
Like a tide slowly rolling in, so did the protesters from all directions of Kiener Plaza in downtown St. Louis. Many of them arrived quietly with signs & flags in hand blanketed in red, white, & blue. Still others arrived, much like myself, wearing curiosity on their face not knowing exactly what to expect. There were circling rumors that some liberal groups would show up to cause trouble in an attempt to give the Tea Parties a bad rep. I saw none of that. In fact, in all fairness I took a photo of one man with a questionable sign that just said, “Tea Party Socialism,” but I like others were simply confused by it.
The whole event felt more like a potluck or a RibFest where instead of being drawn by food, they were drawn by the collective frustration of our government and the search for validation that they were not alone. The change we were expecting with this Administration was more like going from coffee to espresso but not the crack cocaine we got instead. With rising unemployment and an Administration that spends like a kid with a credit card, there was frustration, quiet, collective & respectful. Party had no lines here for like 9/11 on this day we were all just Americans worried where the change will leave us and our children.
A number of people spoke including Dana Loesch & Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit blog). No politicians spoke at this event, however. Only one was in attendance to witness our concerns, Missouri’s U.S. Representative Todd Akin. Many of the speakers made references to the day’s earlier reported story about the Department of Homeland Security’s warning that many former military, religious, and gun-owning citizen’s could be “right-wing extremists.” A couple of the speakers also defended themselves against the local FOX station due to a reporter’s derogatory and inaccurate depiction of the Tea Parties.
After the last speaker finished, much like the tide, they rolled out. A few people remained to continue their discussions with each other while many left as quietly & peacefully as they came. With its 7 to 10 thousand people gathered in Kiener Plaza, it was nowhere near the out of control crowd some of the major news networks predicted. It was truly a “civil protest,” as some have called it, and its greatest strength was not in its voice but in its numbers, and they are growing.
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