PATRIOTS AND PUNKS: THE LABOR DAY TEA PARTY OF MORRISTOWN, NJ

We are going to be straight up about this one: We went to the Tea Party in Morristown, NJ on Labor Day because we were compelled to go after we kind of got brought into it after flyers critical of the event started showing up around town, lending speculation that somehow we were organizing a protest. We came away thinking that there are people who do indeed want to address the issue a lot more responsibly than one would think, given the rep they managed to attain for themselves over these past few months. We managed to talk to a number of people there and even though we are not going to agree with each other on everything, it wasn’t like we were at each other throats by day’s end. We honestly will give props to the organizers for at least giving it a shot of civility. They most certainly earned it. But, alas, we were there. And this was Morristown, the town that gave us our start with a white power rally and a little bit of infamy with Nazis getting slapped around a bit at an anti-immigration rally. If we are in town that means there’s a few thorns on the roses. For one, you can’t have as speakers racist radio hosts Bob Grant – who was announced but didn’t show – Steve Malzberg and some idiot from World Net Daily and expect that civility to last. Also, people carrying signs with President Obama as a witch doctor not to mention the chatter here and there about if he is born in this country pretty much puts that civility on the gurney. One other thing: To Gene “Manly Rash” Hoyas, a speaker at this tea party who on his blog responded to Van Jones’ remark about how “some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are gonna have to get a little bit uppity” with “Somebody had better explain to Mr. Jones that Americans in general don’t like ‘uppity’ people of any color or political persuasion,” you were wearing the Revolutionary War garb of Americans who GOT “uppity”, were participating in a rally with people who some might argue were themselves “uppity”, and considering that DLJ, a few cops and Fox News Analyst Charles Payne were the only black people there, you bringing up color is pretty suspect, so go to hell. That’s what we saw a lot of unfortunately, and considering what we were hearing when we went one on one with the participants, that means we have a lot of good people, including the tea party organizers, getting played by a bunch of latter day McCarthyists who would just as quickly blow them out of the water as they would Obama. We aim to sift out the diamonds out the dirt, which is why we are going to maintain an open door policy with the Morristown crew. Just one thing: Hey, patriots, you think in the future you can keep throwing the flags off the ground?

One People’s Project

MORRISTOWN, NJ-Scores of people came out to the Morristown Green on Labor Day to participate in the latest local “tea party” protest that conservatives around the county have been holding since April 15. While it was generally a civil affair and a respectable protest, some participants, including some speakers were seen as particularly questionable and generated concern before and during the event.

This was the third such event put on by local organizers, the first two being held on April 15 and July 4, and others planned in the future, the next one being Election Day. With the exception of the lunatic fringe LaRouche PAC, which has been trying to paint President Barack Obama as Hitler with the health care issue, there wasn’t a notable organization that participated as such, which was a departure from other tea parties that have been held in other regions. Some elected officials and candidates were in attendance as well. According to the literature distributed, the mission statement of the tea party said the group was “dedicated to supporting the U.S. Consitiution and public policy that adheres to the principles of personal responsibility, individual liberty, limited government and free markets.”

But even before the event took place there had been some issue concerning those who were scheduled to speak, namely notable radio show hosts Bob Grant and Steve Malzberg. Flyers began appearing around Morristown questioning the inclusion of the pair, given their decades-long history of race-baiting and vitriol. “Grant has…allowed several white supremacist groups to give out contact information on his radio program, in particular the National Alliance, who also were permitted to give out their phone number by Malzberg on WABC,” it was noted in the flyer, copies of which were seen posted across the street from the Green. Several incendiary quotes from past radio shows were also included.

At the rally, Grant was a no-show, the organizers citing personal reasons. But Malzberg, who on Friday said that the left was going to come out and protest, was there and was one of the first speakers to the crowd. In his remarks, he declared, as he has on his radio show, that President Obama was a Marxist, and also said that the school that his son’s school district in Fair Lawn, NJ will not show live to elementary school students the speech the President plans to give at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia on Tuesday. “They said Bush did it, Reagan did it, this one did it, but Barack Obama is no Ronald Reagan,” he said.

Malzberg left the tea party early to attend the season opener for Rutgers Football. Ironically, one of the quotes on the anti-tea party flyer noted that in 1995, when African American Rutgers University students interrupted a basketball game in protest of then-University President Francis Lawrence’s remarks that seemed to promote eugenics, Malzberg said on his radio show that were they to do it again, police should use guns and hoses to quell the protest.

Another speaker was author Jack Cashill from World Net Daily, a website that contributes heavily to the long discredited notion that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Cashill, who is best known for promoting another discredited notion that it was former Weather Underground member William Ayers that wrote Obama’s book, accused Obama of trying to remove the male figure from the head of the household, and is trying to turn the country into the “United States of Newark”. Cashill said that he saw this while living in Newark, NJ, and suggested that removing that male figure is how socialism is ushered into a society.

The Socialist theme is one that played itself out often in the signs seen around the Green and in the rhetoric of the speakers, particularly from Cuban activists invited to speak. Other signs accused Obama of being the Antichrist, while a particularly racist one depicted Obama as a witch doctor. The back of the sign read “Wake up America Before Its To (sic) Late”.

That’s right. This guy at the Morristown Tea Party is wearing a shirt with a quote from the band Anti-Flag, a decidedly left-wing band. They are going to loooooooove this!

Despite the warnings that there were going to be protests, there were only a few counter-demonstrators that came out. One held an old Edward Kennedy Presidential Campaign sign, while another had a sign supporting the reelection of New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. A third person held a sign reading “Go home, Limbaugh Lunatics”, and not only traded barbs with some of the attendees, but even sh
ook the hand of one who thanked him for coming out even though he was on the other side.

The man stuck to his principles however, and maintained his concern over the direction conservatives have taken since the election of America’s first Black President. “They rather divide and conquer than come together as a country,” he later said.

Other rallies have been held across the country, which are all going to culminate in a larger rally on Sept. 12 in Washington DC that is sponsored by various established organizations including U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks.