Anti-tax “Tea Party” in Goshen
April 11, 2009 by Julia King · 5 Comments
It’s so much more relaxing visiting a protest than actually organizing one. As a visitor to a protest, all those people who wear the wrong clothes or make signs that are distractingly ill-conceived are entertaining. As an organizer of a protest, the goal is as much message cohesion as possible; but as a visitor, the presence of opposing political currents (like right-wing Christians and Libertarians, for instance) provides a nice undercurrent of interest. On the political Left, there are frequently too many drums and white guys with dreadlocks; on the political Right, there are too many flags and dirty baseball caps (and when I say “dirty,” I mean that they need to be washed, not that they are embroidered with naked ladies).
And so this morning I stood on the Elkhart County Courthouse lawn in Goshen as several hundred people (some with baseball caps, some with flags, and some with church flyers) threw a local version of the national anti-tax “Tea Party” that’s become all the rage on the Right. A lot of people who didn’t notice our dept or deficit or war expenditures when George W. Bush was in office are suddenly counting our collective pennies now that we’re talking about health care.
Have I mentioned that I like democracy? I do. I do like democracy. I love that Americans can congregate in public spaces and say anything they want (except “fire!” or “kill!” of course).
“Cut the fat!” read one sign (cleverly shaped like a pig). I approached the sign holder and asked her what, exactly, did she not want to pay for. She said she didn’t want to pay for things that “aren’t really necessary.” When I asked her about health care, she paused for quite a while. She wasn’t sure about that. Since she didn’t have insurance, she was iffy on that one. But she did not want to pay for some study about bird migrations, she said.
Midway through our conversation the prayer started, so we silenced ourselves to bow our heads and listen. The pastor at the microphone invoked Deuteronomy 28 and at one point mentioned “heathen nations” and at another point said we should be living as an “unabashedly Christian nation.” It was a long prayer.
I moved on through the crowd, taking note of a man’s “No Taxation without Representation!” sign. Was he from Washington, D.C. (where they really are taxed without representation)? Or was he just confused? Either way, the man (and the crowd) heard from Indiana state representative Wes Culver.
Culver speaks in sweeping terms, the way most good politicians do, but he isn’t afraid to utter specifics. Today he was the only one brave enough to make the real-world connection between taxes and government services. “If you don’t like taxes, don’t complain about potholes or the brush not being picked up on your street,” he said. (It would have been fair to add more items to that list of things not to complain about, including, but not limited to: your poorly educated kids, or when you have to file for bankruptcy because your health insurance runs out, or tainted milk products from China that end up on your table because regulators have been “cut back” along with the budget).
The people who congregated at the courthouse were there for a range of reasons, but they more-or-less agreed that taxes were too high (and that those taxes pay for things that “aren’t really necessary”). Some of them seemed like reasonable people who had done their homework, like the man I spoke with from a group called “FairTax;” (he was nice enough, but I’ll need to read more about it before I comment on the actual plan) but others just wanted to hang their ideology somewhere – and the “taxes” hook was the most convenient place. “Don’t use my tax dollars for abortion,” demanded one sign.
It was a crisp and sunny spring day, perfect weather for a Tea Party. There was plenty of energy and determination. But there was no clear winning argument.
