Grassroots? Umm … yeah

Nancy Pelosi sure won’t like this … but I wanted to take a moment to point to two posts that point out the grassroots nature of the Tea Parties today. The first comes from Brainflation who reported on the Hartford rally for the Huffpost.

One of the organizers identified as Rick reluctantly volunteered as a grassroots organizer when other leadership failed to surface. He jokingly wondered when he’d be receiving his check in response to claims by some media outlets that the Tea Parties were a product of the RNC or other national Republican organizations. There was a variety of material being passed around from multiple organizations including the Campaign for Liberty and Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations but the lack State or National Republican representation at the event gave credibility to the grassroots claim. Organizers were deliberate in their exclusion of politicians and candidates from the microphone citing a desire to prevent a genuine citizen movement from being hijacked by the agendas of the same politicos who brought on the need for protests.

Indeed. I know Rick … he’s still looking for contributions to help defray the cost. Just so you know.

And here’s what the Kansas City Star reported today.

Democrats and other skeptics are desperate to dismiss the tea parties that popped up across the country today. Kansas City political consultant Steve Glorioso told The Star they were being staged by the “same far right fringe characters driven in large part by talk radio.”
This eagerness to explain away this movement is telling, suggesting the skeptics see these gatherings as a real threat. Certainly the tea parties have an anti-Obama slant, but what we’re seeing is something outside the normal dynamics of Democrat-Republican tension.

It is a real threat … but just to politicians who do not pay attention … and spend our money too freely for their benefit. And here is what Glenn Reynolds wrote in the WSJ this morning.

So who’s behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize. For a number of years, techno-geeks have been organizing “flash crowds” — groups of people, coordinated by text or cellphone, who converge on a particular location and then do something silly, like the pillow fights that popped up in 50 cities earlier this month. This is part of a general phenomenon dubbed “Smart Mobs” by Howard Rheingold, author of a book by the same title, in which modern communications and social-networking technologies allow quick coordination among large numbers of people who don’t know each other.

If you are not afraid (ha!)… it’s worth the entire read.