Las Cruces tea party movement is growing
A scene from the first tea party held in Las Cruces on April 15. (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
Between 1,200 and 1,400 people showed up Tuesday evening for a tea party protest in Las Cruces that’s part of a nationwide tour, according to the Las Cruces Sun-News.
The Tea Party Express also made a stop in Albuquerque on Tuesday, and was in El Paso today before heading east. The tax protests will culminate on Sept. 12 with a march on Washington.
The Albuquerque Journal can’t tell you how many people showed up in Albuquerque on Tuesday, and the El Paso Times says 300 attended today’s protest in a city that is six times the size of Las Cruces.
In Las Cruces, the 1,200 to 1,400 people who showed up Tuesday prove that the movement is growing. About 400 people showed up for the first tea party here in April.
Annette and Hugh Black of Las Cruces were among those who attended Tuesday’s protest.
“We’ve never done anything like this before, but we’re kind of worried about what’s going on in this country,” Annette Black was quoted by the Sun-News as saying.
Speakers included Deborah Johns of the Our Country Deserves Better political action committee.
“We’ve got to put the breaks on government and get them to stop passing any more bills: the bailouts and the stimulus package and the bailout of the auto industry, and now we have the health-care bill,” the newspaper quoted Johns as saying.
The local Las Cruces TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party group appears to be pleased with what’s happening. There are some positive notes on its Facebook page today about Tuesday’s event.
“I would like to thank everyone that worked so hard to put together last nights event! IT WAS AMAZING!!! Also, thank you to all of you that attended! If I didn’t get around to meet you and thank you personally, I’m sorry. But from my heart, Thank you for being there!!!!” wrote Mary Johnson.
“Great Job Las Cruces, NM! Just saw you on TV! Not coming through Missouri so I thought about catching the express somewhere along the way! Congratulations on a nice showing!” Charles Daniel Duckworth wrote.
Update, 6:30 p.m.
The Las Cruces event got some national TV coverage. Check it out:
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The movement would have even more support ihe name was “Taxed Enough Already-No more government services for me!” Just saying…
Paranoid Mark Williams, a ultra conservative, is leading the Tea Party Express – here are a few incendiary remarks by Mr. Williams over the years:
Mr. Williams on Katrina from CNN interview
“And these people you saw at the convention center, the people who were trapped there, trapped — I`m using that word very loosely — are screaming, “We want help, we want help” for four or five days. Yet they didn`t bother even trying to help themselves.”
About Kanye West…
“…this guy is a Klansman in black face.”
Mark’s anti-Arab hate mongering, entitled “Finishing What Hitler Started”
“If there is a crueler pile of camel manure than Palestine, then it has got to be the total fiction of a Palestinian ‘people’ … ”
Mark’s Anti-Filipino hate mongering
Williams closed the show by giving an “award” to the Philippines for pulling out of Iraq. The piece contained backgrounds sounds of crowing chickens and insinuations that Filipinos were monkeys.
KFBK TV in Sacramento cancelled his show in 2005 afer these remarks although budget reasons were cited for his cancellation. Now he is one of the leaders of the TEA Party Express. Of course he compared Hitler to Obama in a long diatribe.
The Republican Party is being taken over by the extreme right wing of the party. The TEA Party movement represents angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers showing “how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority.” Dr. Richard Hofstadter, a famous historian, called it the “paranoid style.” This style evokes “the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy”. Watch these videoes.
Dr. Hofstadter was DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. His book, “Anti-intellectualism in American Life,” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKBa9K_vAm8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnDQHj_sIQI
Great job LC! This is as good as the grassroots Energy Citizens rallies and protests sweeping the state and country, 1200 in Farmington alone. I do wish Chu and Harry has stayed around to see what the citizens think of their political policies and agendas. But I guess once the money from the fundraisers was collected it was time to leave town.