Protest at the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Convention

The 2010 Virginia Tea Party Patriots convention, being held on October 8th and 9th, began at the Richmond Convention Center today, and The Partisan was on the scene.

Having arrived early to protest against the Tea Party, this writer noticed significantly less people were in attendance than expected, and only saw one bus bringing in people from out of town. It would seem that with all of the hype given to the Tea Party by the Richmond Times-Disgrace and other media, you can safely assume that the real number of attendees was significantly less than what the mainstream media will say.

Our small protest group gathered on the sidewalk by the media vans. We immediately pulled out our signs and tried to get in the background of the news broadcast. The signs read, "Greasy Old Perverts" with the letters G,O, and P in bold. Another sign said, "Tea Party = Corporate Media Shills." The best one of all said "Don't step on me," and had a picture of a turd, obviously a parody of the Gadsden flag ("Don't tread on me"). One of our fellow protesters was wearing a taco costume.

Some of the workers inside of the convention center waved at us in support of our anti-Tea Party signs.

Sam Brock from CBS 6 approached us and asked us to avoid getting in his camera shot. When we refused, however, he became angry and said something rude, having to be dragged away by his coworker. Maybe we misheard him, but he was, in our group's opinion, acting unprofessional. It is apparent that the media wants to censor and stifle those who disagree with the mainstream and discourage activism that isn't backed by the rich.

Later on, one of our group's members, Chris Dorsey, tried to get himself on the live broadcast again by maneuvering himself behind Sam.

We then went to another sidewalk with more cars and Tea Party members. We held up a 3x5 foot red Che Guevara flag. Chris held another sign saying "End the Federal Reserve." It is worth stopping here to explain how we put Che and anti-Fed sentiment together. The Federal Reserve is the monetary source for American capitalism, and although it might be replaced with something just as bad if it were brought down, it is still worth targeting along with other scum like the Republicans.

At the beginning of our protest, the Tea Party attendees just laughed at our signs (they were pretty funny), but this Che flag really angered them. One person across the street, claiming to be a Cuban-American, yelled her disagreement with the flag. I responded that she was a "worm," and flipped her off. Just because someone lives in a country doesn't mean they know what is/was really going on there, which is why there are so many ignorant people in America today. The same applies to anti-socialist people claiming Cuban ancestry. This isn't to say all criticisms of Cuba and Che are invalid, certainly there are many good ones that can be made.

Another person, an older man, yelled at us and I told him to "suck it." He didn't like this and said, "I'm going to break your face, bitch." I responded, "do it, I'd love an excuse to sue you." Say what you'd like, I wouldn't mind going to high levels of hypocrisy to screw over a right-winger, especially if I can take his money. I eventually told him to "get cancer." We said similar things to each other when he came around again in his car.

Threatening people with violence right away is a sign of poor mental health, and yet, it is something the conservatives love. With that in mind, only people who are messed up in the head would turn to hardcore right-wing ideology like that of the Tea Party. To be fair, I don't know that anti-Che individual, and this paragraph isn't meant to be a comment on his mental state in particular.

The thing is, this old man probably couldn't fight anyway given the shape he appeared to be in. He was just a trash-talker like every other conservative. If right-wingers weren't wimps and could actually fight, then Bush would have finished everything in Afghanistan within two terms.

At the end, we pulled out a large sign that read "9/11 was an inside job," and "follow the money." A lot of people seemed to like it.

Throughout the time of the anti-Tea Party protest, a few people stopped to have conversations with us. We discussed things such as how the Tea Party movement was being hijacked from the libertarians by the Neo-Conservatives (click here), and how similar things have happened to left-wing movements in the past. The awful two-party domination of American politics was also discussed, as well as the unfair parts of the health care legislation. One thing they told us was that certain mainstream Republicans didn't receive a warm welcome from the convention goers.

Click here to go to the blog of the protest group. Keep in mind that this entry is a personal account of the event, and the insults said here don't reflect the group's official line. The members agree on most things, but not everything (which is normal).

Also visit our sister website, The Richmond Spark.