Five Things Radicals & the Left Should Do in the Face of Tea Parties

By brotherkomrade

Before I start this I want to get something straight away: I hold the position that confronting the Right-Wing tendency we see today on the streets known as Tea Partiers is in no way the same as support for Barack Obama and the ruling class party we know as the Democrats.

Tea Partiers are right-wingers that are usually portrayed by the MSM as loose wing-nuts who are dangerous, but misguided or just ignorant. They have been getting a lot of press and camera time lately and the one thing that I’m concerned with is that they are allowed to appear wherever they pop up unchallenged and their lies unanswered.

Top 5 list of what the radicals and the Left should do in the face of Tea Parties:

1. We don’t have to be there to defend the current administration’s agenda – we should be there to present our own: no more tax dollars for wars that seek to take natural resources for profit and in the process uproot the lives of other people throughout the Global South. No more tax dollars to killer cops, dismantle capitalism and replace it with a just and non-exploitative society. We can present our ideas the usual way; signs placards, but I’m sure that’s tired for most of us now.

Maybe stage teach-ins regarding the stances that the Tea Baggers represent such as their opposition to a woman’s right to do what she wants with her body if she is fronted with an unwanted pregnancy. We could have testimonies by women who have had difficulties getting to abortion clinics or getting affordable treatment to ending pregnancies due to age or lack of money. This would show how the beliefs of Tea Partiers affect the autonomy of women and their rights to choose abortion and to also show how the party of both Clinton and Obama has done nothing bend over forwards to chip away at reproductive rights most likely to appease the right-wing for some semblance of “objectivity or ‘fairness’ towards the Bible Belt folk, but in essence to keep women’s fate in the hands of men from both “sides of the aisle.”

2. Be the Tea Party Crashers – This can be done in numerous ways, but if we are to make an appearance let’s show up with info, chants, and video cameras to expose these idiots for who they are. Any radical or revolutionary worth a damn knows that the current administration in power is no threat to capitalism or imperialism. Our honey-boy has in fact deepened the occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and has no solution to bringing the working class out of its descent to permanent underclass and poverty yet the Tea Baggers call him a socialist.

Obama’s actions are anything but those of a socialist, let alone a progressive so we should be on hand to show what real radicals, revolutionaries, and progressives look like.

Who would be the Party Crashers?
Anyone who is angry at looking at a bunch of privileged quislings who are masquerading as the ‘oppressed’ or as the ‘salt of the Earth’ when none of them have ever been in the cross-hairs of racist or classist cops, those whose lives have been affected by the economic polices of the last eight presidents and the presidents before them. People of color, members of the working class, and a strong contingent of non-sectarian organizers. And on that note, Anarchists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists of all stripes, syndicalists, general leftists, and yes, even liberals – we need to put the sectarian bullshit down for a second start confronting these Tea Baggers. We know our history all too well to know that this manure bed known and the Tea Party Movement can and will grow a garden variety of far more reactionary forces that could be put into power than we have ever seen.

3. In the 1990s, the right-wing was electrified by the national efforts of Operation Rescue; an anti-abortion coalition composed of a broad selection of right-winger who hate women and the idea of them not having their biology be their destinies. The left quickly formed action-coalitions all over the country and we mobilized thousands for clinic defense. At the time I identified myself as an anarchist, but there I was linking arms with patent pearl-Liberals, Big-C commies, and most importantly, people who were awaken to politics for the first time inn their lives and opened their minds to a whole new world of radical ideas and a way of living against those who sought to physically crash our human wall to enter the clinics top stop abortions or worse, to commit violence against clinic workers and doctors. I remember proudly and wistfully of haranguing the Lamb God members, talking politics to the teens who were dragged to the clinics by their reactionary parents and seeing the light come on in their eyes as we talked about why their parents were wrong. Hell, I’m even thinking of a young Ernesto coming to the one of the clinics one morning with his Boom Box (yes, a boom box in in the 90s) blasting PE to drown out the Prayers and the shouts at entering vans. There were defense tactics employed and we face the lower-tier of our enemies and we weren’t backing down at all.

Fast forward to the awesome efforts of comrades who have been counter-demoing Minutemen and shadowing their efforts. I point these examples out as ways that we could be effective in organizing against the Tea Baggers. We could make thin their numbers just by simply showing up or we could strengthen their resolve thereby bringing out the more reactionary among them and the way I see it, that’s a win-win situation.

4. Taking the Open Source route – An anti-Tea Party movement could have some single banner and I wouldn’t mind that I guess, but I would say that success could hang on the fact that tactics and strategies should be open to constant improving and building up by as many of those who get involved. Though I tire of street theater and other forms of gimmickry, at demos and protest, I wouldn’t frown on a line a kid with huge wire-framed black screens that take on shapes of squares blocking Tea Baggers from camera views – Black Blocking, version 2.0.

We could also look into how much it would cost to rent one those outside sounds systems that Dance Hall DJs use so we can state facts about all the reactionary policies that these people love to support and how they are apart of them.

5. Obviously we as community organizers have the historical perspective to back us up in letting the public know that Obama and the current administration in the White House are not the nice face of some secret communist coup. I propose that the actions of counter-demos against the Tea Baggers can also function as recruiting tools aimed at youth of color in communities effected the most by the economic powers of the ruling class. The counter-demos could become re-energized movements that I know will prove to be far larger and effective in organizing than the tea baggers. After all, we have been doing this longer.

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