A smiling and happy white, older upper middle class and financially comfortable Tea Party activist has invited me to see the upcoming 4th of July festivities. The Tea Party plans to participate fully.
I have been hanging around activists, protesters and radicals for decades. The sight of a protest movement that has plenty of money to put where their mouths are is new. So I am going to make a suggestion to all you financially struggling radicals out there.
Go to the next Tea Party public protest and share the wealth. They freely invite just about anybody to attend and they always hold their events in nice, even swank places. Some of those events you have to pay to get into, but a lot of them are out in the public and the public is invited. You get to spend the day in a beautiful location, you get to bring your own picket sign with whatever message on it that you want and you get to stand in front of all the cameras aimed at them. And they will smile and be nice to you the whole time.
Now, if you happen to be a an anti-racist and you end up sharing the sidewalk with birthers and fundies, or vice versa,I have a plan to help you fit your activities into the venue. Bring along some of those actual oppressed and downtrodden people that you are always talking about and let them demonstrate beside you.
Now one of the ways you can tell the oppressed from the well-to-do is by the condition of their bodies, hair and teeth. You might be able to get nice clothes for a day's worth of radical action, but you can't erase the damage that the weight of a lifetime of exploitation has done to your back.
I have seen more bad backs, broken down legs and missing teeth at right wing rallies than at leftie events. I haven't seen much of those things at all at the Tea Party events, though these guys are still so new on the scene, that I don't have as much to go on.
So what an idea. Bring those crips with you so the Tea Party folk can see what's going to happen to people if the well-to-do folk refuse to kick in the money for more health care and higher wages. We can all rub elbows and negotiate some of the differences among “the people” and leave all of our high and mighty public officials to sit in their ivory towers and argue theory.

auntieracist.tripod.com