by Dick Armey
Their bluff had been called. At this point, a compromise would be equal to surrender. What was planned as a peaceful expression of disagreement would now give way to protest. No permission would be sought, and the consequences would be accepted by every man in the room.
By early evening, a group of about two hundred men, some disguised as Indians, assembled on a hill overlooking the harbor. Bellowing war chants, the men marched two by two to the wharf, descended upon the three ships, and dumped their offending cargoes of tea into the water. Hewes gleefully pitched enormous crates of tea overboard, any one of which was likely worth more than a year of his income from shoemaking.
The reaction in London was swift and extreme. In March 1774, Parliament passed what later came to be known as the Intolerable Acts, which among other measures closed the port of Boston. The response at home was equally intense, as the Tea Partiers discovered a groundswell of public opinion in their support. Thousands of citizens had detested the arrogance and shortsightedness of British policy, but until then had not found a voice to speak out. Encouraged by the protesters’ bold actions, public opinion galvanized against the Crown and in favor of separation.
In many ways, the American Revolution did not begin with a shot. It first echoed with a splash as crates of tea tipped into the murky waters of Boston Harbor. While the history books may remember the great leaders of the time and commemorate their achievements, a great deal of the glory must be shared with men like George Hewes—ordinary men who took extraordinary actions in defense of liberty.
A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS
MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED YEARS later, Mary Rakovich and her fellow Tea Party activists were motivated by a similar sense of outrage. In fact, history teaches us that nothing could be more American than a protest. What made the opening salvos of the Tea Party movement so jarring to political, academic, and news media observers was its unlikely source—an irate group of citizens from across the political spectrum who were agitating and demanding change. For generations, guerrilla tactics had been a trademark of the Left, best demonstrated in ecoterrorism and virulent antiwar campaigns. Accustomed to Code Pink public disturbance stunts and blood-tossing animal rights’ activists, students of political activism had come to understand public protest as left-leaning by definition and reserved for those who were willing to damage public property and disrupt legal activities. Now that middle-class Americans of all backgrounds were taking to the Internet, airwaves, and streets, conventional wisdom was turned on its head and the original Tea Party was seen in a new light.
For the staff at FreedomWorks, this was nothing new. Originally founded as Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) in 1984, the organization was dedicated to the idea that ordinary Americans could and should demand more accountability from their elected officials.
Long before Barack Obama employed community organizing tactics in the Democratic presidential primary states, our organization was mobilizing citizens in the fight for lower taxes, less government, and more freedom. In the 1980s we helped pioneer direct-mail techniques to engage citizens in direct action against big government. In the early 1990s we were one of the first issue advocacy groups to effectively use professional message development and paid television advertising to drive policy outcomes. We used these tools to help stop Vice President Al Gore’s new tax on carbon-based energy, the so-called BTU tax.
As the years passed, we shifted tactics again to focus on organizing “boots on the ground,” with paid field operatives, putting real people in front of political decision-makers. This proved instrumental in stopping the Clinton administration’s attempted health care takeover. CSE organized protesters at every stop of First Lady Hillary Clinton’s “Health Care Express,” a national bus tour designed to galvanize support for the legislation. Instead of the adoring crowds she expected, Mrs. Clinton was greeted by hundreds of citizens opposed to her plan. We even followed her entourage with a truck towing an old broken-down bus. On the side was spray-painted THIS IS GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE.
According to Washington Post columnist David Broder, “Nothing better displayed both the muscle and tactical planning of the opponents [of Clinton’s health care plan] than the crushing of this forlorn bus caravan that summer. It was the crowning success of . . . the conservative political interest group, Citizens for a Sound Economy.”
Today, these tactics seem dated, overpriced, and relatively ineffective—in today’s parlance, “Astroturf”—relative to the real power of the decentralized community of freedom fighters that make up the Tea Party movement. Some things do remain constant, however, like the threats of massive energy taxes on carbon-based fuels and big, expensive, overbearing, government-run health care. Our mission remains the same, too: to defend the individual against the unjust encroachments of big government by empowering Americans to get involved and make a difference when and where decisions are made.
Years before the emergence of the modern Tea Party movement, FreedomWorks and a few like-minded organizations understood that taxpayer activism was alive and well. We were convinced that good ideas alone were not enough to win and that real social change came from the ground up, not the top down. We were reading Saul Alinsky, Barack Obama’s mentor, a decade before it became cool. We also read Dedication and Leadership by Douglas Hyde and A Force More Powerful by Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall. We understood that it is more important to come out of a legislative or regulatory battle stronger than you went into it than it is to simply win any particular skirmish. In the 1990s we translated this into an internal motto for staff and activists: “Winning by Building; Building by Winning.”
At the time, however, these tactics were mostly employed by left-leaning groups—teachers’ unions protecting a broken school system, radicals smashing windows at a World Trade Organization protest in Seattle, or public employees pushing for more wages and benefits and fewer hours worked. It seemed then that direct action, as leftists refer to it, was only used in efforts to expand the size and scope of government. The folks at FreedomWorks knew better.
It was no coincidence that FreedomWorks was at the center of the activism that followed Rick Santelli’s rant. Indeed, FreedomWorks had facilitated some of the most impactful events just prior to Santelli’s call to action and was already standing at the forefront of that first wave of political participation from the previously silent majority.
The very day of Santelli’s outburst, FreedomWorks set up a Web site at IAmWithRick.com to give new activists access to basic tools and information. The site was an overnight success, earning tens of thousands of visitors within days of its creation. At the same time, FreedomWorks was flooded with calls and questions from first-time demonstrators eager to learn more about how to make their voices heard. Within just a few weeks of the rant, FreedomWorks helped coordinate dozens of taxpayer tea parties involving thousands of activists in places like Washington, D.C., Sarasota, Tampa, Jacksonville, Fort Myers, Tallahassee, St. Louis, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Rochester, Charlotte, San Francisco, Salem, and Sacramento.
A shocked mainstream media hurried to catch up. “The tea party concept has gained significant traction2 since Mr. Santelli’s rant,” the New York Times breathlessly reported. “FreedomWorks, a nonprofit group that mounts grassroots campaigns, has made Mr. Santelli the emblem of its efforts to oppose the stimulus, publishing his face on its home page and asking: ‘Are you with Rick? We are.’ ”
Meanwhile, the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch offered an account from the front lines:
Critics of President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan gathered beneath the Arch Friday to cheer speeches over a bullhorn and toss tea into the Mississippi River. Pleased with the turnout in 35-degree bluster, leaders said they had stolen a page from liberal tradition by taking to the streets with homemade signs. “If I had known this many people would show up, I’d have charged admission,” said Bill Hennessy of Ballwin, the lead organizer. “We’ll do this every chance we get until Congress repeals the pork—or we retire them from p
ublic life.” Hennessy estimated that more than a thousand people showed up. There was no official count, but the crowd spilled3 across roughly one-fourth of the grand staircase from the Arch to Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard.
FreedomWorks was also active on the cutting edge of technology that allowed a disparate group to quickly connect and plan events. A key tool that aided protesters in the earliest, most disorganized stages was a Google map that tracked activist events and allowed anyone with Internet access to find a group. The map was soon filled with virtual thumbtacks, a digital monument to the growing power of the movement. Staffers posted and shared key Twitter handles, offered advice on Facebook fan pages, and created massive e-mail lists of citizens who wanted to be informed of upcoming activities. The revolution, as it turned out, was not only televised. It was blogged, tweeted, texted, friended, and Facebooked.
SAMUEL ADAMS, COMMUNITY ORGANIZER
THE SPARK THAT IGNITED the modern Tea Party movement was not just a question of bad economics—it cut to the core of basic American values of individual choice and individual accountability. Millions of Americans were still angry over the new culture of bailouts that had taken Washington by storm since the popping of the housing bubble in 2008 and they were just itching for a fight. They thought that candidate Obama would prove different, having run on a mantra of fiscal responsibility. Regardless of their limited choices at the ballot box, the American people were hungry for accountability, for the American way of doing things.
The entire founding enterprise, including America’s Declaration of Independence from the British Crown in 1776 happened only because of the tea party ethos, the tradition of rising up against tyranny and taking to the streets in protest. Indeed, the period of American history leading up to the signing of the Declaration is the definitive case study in effective grassroots organization and the power of a committed, organized minority to defeat powerful, entrenched interests.
For any activist who fought in the trenches against Obama’s hostile takeover of the health care system, the process that produced the Declaration will sound all too familiar: debate inside the Continental Congress was often dominated by lies, vote buying, and the influence of deep-pocketed business interests enjoying the favored treatment of the executive branch (King George III, that is). Does any of this ring a bell?
How did the advocates of liberty prevail over the entrenched interests and apathetic citizens that might have stifled the efforts of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin? The answer, of course, is grassroots activism of citizens outside of the formal political process. The Declaration was radical in principle and revolutionary in practice—sweeping political change driven by a grassroots cadre of committed individuals armed only with their passion and their principles. Politics as usual did not stop them, and neither did lack of popular support. The political momentum for liberty was in large part created by the efforts of citizen patriots from Massachusetts, later joined by men in the other colonies. These so-called Sons of Liberty, led by a struggling entrepreneur named Samuel Adams—yes, the guy on the beer label—used targeted grassroots activism to undercut American support for British rule and create the political conditions that made ratification of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution possible.
Speaking truth to power was important, Adams knew, but nothing beat the power of grassroots activism. In the early 1750s Adams began recruiting activists to the cause of liberty, targeting men in taverns and workers in the shipyards and on the streets of Boston. His tactics often involved antitax protests under the Liberty Tree, a large elm across from Boylston Market. Tax collectors were hung in effigy and Crown-appointed governors mocked, belittled, and verbally abused. The Sons of Liberty organized boycotts of British goods and monopolistic practices that were de facto taxes on the colonists. Adams packed town hall meetings at Faneuil Hall, filling the room with patriots so that Tory voices were overwhelmed. Every oppressive new policy handed down by King George and the House of Commons was used to build the ranks of the Sons of Liberty. Taxes imposed by the Stamp Act of 1765, trade duties created by the Townshend Acts—each was an excuse to rally new recruits to the cause of American independence.
The most famous act of Whig defiance against the Crown—the Boston Tea Party—is now viewed as a tipping point in the battle for American independence. It had a profound impact on public opinion among the uncommitted population. It was not a spontaneous looting by angry tea drinkers but an operation carefully choreographed by Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty. When a Parliament-granted monopoly to the East India Trading Company dramatically drove up the price of tea in the colonies, Adams saw an opportunity to channel outrage into action. The “Mohawks” who emptied British tea into Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773, were his activists disguised by Indian war paint to protect their identities from Tory spies. Because property was not destroyed (other than the tea) and the ships’ crews not harmed, the Boston Tea Party gave the Sons of Liberty broader public acceptance in the colonies.
The British response to the antics of the Sons of Liberty inevitably helped galvanize public opposition to British control. A series of political blunders coupled with the Port Act and the British blockade of Boston Harbor in 1774 ultimately led to the gathering of the first Continental Congress at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia.
The grassroots pressure organized by Adams was not reserved for King George and British bureaucrats exclusively. Adams also targeted Tory loyalists and “half-patriots” in the Congress. On one occasion, Pennsylvania delegate Joseph Galloway threatened to derail momentum4 for American independence with a last-minute proposal to settle disputes with Great Britain. Despite the well-articulated arguments of Patrick Henry and other patriots inside Congress, Galloway gained support among Tory and middle ground interests defending the status quo. Instead of arguing with his peers in the Congress, Delegate Samuel Adams organized outside, in the streets of Philadelphia.
In his classic account of the people and events that led to America’s birth, A. J. Langguth wrote that the “crowds around Carpenters’ Hall soon heard5 that a faction led by Joseph Galloway was bent on selling out their liberties. Galloway headed a powerful Quaker bloc, and yet he began to fear being attacked by a mob in his own home precincts.” He backed down, knowing that Adams had organized his grassroots opposition. “He eats little6,” complained the Pennsylvania delegate of Adams, “drinks little, sleeps little, thinks much, and is most decisive and indefatigable in the pursuit of his objects.”
Poor Samuel Adams. He was a pious man who resented the drinking and carousing of the privileged elite in favor with the British Crown in Boston. Today he is the mascot for a beer company. He was a tireless champion of individual liberty who dedicated his life to the battle for American independence. Today his tactics have been hijacked by leftist radicals hell-bent on tearing down the institutions that make our nation special. How did we lose our cultural heritage of grassroots activism to the big-government crowd? Isn’t it about time we took it back?
LOOK OUT BELOW
TO BE SURE, THE brave men who authored and signed the Declaration were a unique blessing—smart, dedicated souls who define the word patriot. They put their principles first, and they put their lives on the line for the very idea of America. The final line of the Declaration pledging all to the cause, “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” was not empty rhetoric. The consequences of failure were dire and the signers knew that the ink on that parchment represented high treason against the British government, an act punishable by death. As the Declaration of Independence was sent to the printers for publication and distribution, signer Benjamin Harrison reportedly told one of his colleagues: “I shall have great advantage7 over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.” These patriots were willing to risk everything to overthrow ty
ranny and establish a free and independent nation based on the sovereign rights of the individual. Many suffered greatly for their legacy.
These were the legislative entrepreneurs, the insiders, elected officials who must drive the process from within the legislative body. Without them, nothing happens. But it is equally fair to say that this defining act of courage by the founders would not have been possible without the men in the streets, the activists under the Liberty Tree, or the “Mohawks” who courageously scored one of the first public relations home runs in American history.
So don’t go chasing that political unicorn of perfect leadership: good government based on the best arguments, implemented by selfless servants who miraculously leave their interests at the door when they enter public service. The founders knew that this was not possible, and that individuals given the monopolistic power of the state would inevitably sacrifice good government for more government power. More power, that is, unless kept in check. The best way to limit the natural self-interest of public officials and the influence of deep-pocketed interest groups is to restrain government and limit the incentives to manipulate tax, spending, and regulatory decisions.
BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE
WE ACCEPT THE TEA Party brand because Santelli, perhaps unintentionally, reintroduced freedom-loving Americans to their roots and a fundamental tenet of our nation’s fabric. “Tea Party” was a perfect moniker for the citizen rebellion that was brewing, and Santelli showed up at just the right time with a call to action that was remarkably suited to the cultural sentiments of a budding grassroots community.