One Of These Tea Partiers Is Not Like The Other…

Photo provided by Suzy Khimm.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Riled by recent reports of Tea Party crashers who are trying to sabotage the movement, the anti-government activists who gathered in downtown DC for a tax day rally were keeping a suspicious eye out for possible impostors in their ranks. “There are people trying to infiltrate there,” said Dona Karas, a 54-year-old housewife from Pittsburgh, who attended a protest at Washington’s Freedom Plaza organized by the GOP-backed Tea Party Express. “There is a group trying to discredit this anyway they can.”

Karas was referring to recent news that pranksters were planning to participate in Tea Party’s tax day events in an effort to make the movement look intolerant and moronic. She saw this as proof that the racist, homophobic attacks on Democratic lawmakers during the health care vote weren’t the work of conservative activists but outside plants. “I have to believe it may have been somebody there trying to disrupt and discredit the good work that we’re really trying to do,” Karas said. To emphasize this point, she carried a sign that said, “I am not racist, crazy, homophobic or bigoted.” Other Tea Partiers wielded signs belying a similar concern about possible intruders: “Tea Party Imposters Go Home” and “Stop Obama’s brown shirt infiltrators and his domestic enemies of the constitution.”

Karas and other activists claimed that outsiders had been working to sabotage the very rally underway around them. “There was a man here antagonizing other people, looking at the signs, screaming—he was wearing medals, but I don’t think they were medals that he earned,” said a middle-aged woman at the rally, suggesting that the man was trying to provoke an incident. Karas added: “It was a black man, so I think he may take this as personal.”

Paranoia about infiltrators has led some activists to become wary of fellow protesters who don’t fit the profile of a typical Tea Partier. At the rally, I met two heavily pierced and tattooed young activists, dressed head-to-toe in Goth-style clothes and carrying a black version of the ubiquitous “Don’t Tread on Me” sign. “Due to the way that many in the Tea Party have been wrongfully stereotyped, they don’t think that I fit that mold,” said Mario Jones, 27, vice president of a Tea Party group in West Virginia’s Marion County. His 20-year-old companion agreed. “A lot of people are like, you don’t look like you belong here. This is my freedom—this is how I dress every day,” said Amanda Chatham, an unemployed mother from Philadelphia. She noted that she’d been spurred to protest by concerns about “getting [monitoring] chips put into our hands” as part of health care reform.

Tea Party supporters across the country warned activists to be on the watch for suspicious outsiders. In California, Tea Party-backed Senate candidate Chuck DeVore called for “vigilance” and “extra security to keep the peace” in advance of today’s rallies. “Groups such as Crashtheteaparty.org plan to disrupt the tea parties,” DeVore’s press statement said, cautioning Tea Partiers against “engag[ing] those who want to disrupt or attack.”

In DC, some protesters jokingly applauded the Tea Party’s anomalous Goth contingent. “Freedom comes in all flavors!” shouted one passerby. But others, heeding the warnings, were more skeptical. “They aren’t representative of the movement,” one woman informed me as I was trying to snap a photo of the pair. “No, I talked to them, they’re for real,” another man responded. “I’m not sure,” she replied, walking away as the rally dispersed.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate