Much has been said about the Tea Party movement. The crusade has inspired a resurgence of words: Grass Roots, Astroturf (as applied to Tea Parties) and Activists. The most interesting to me is the grass roots movement in America. And that involves the basic idea of Tea Parties. The best known is The Boston Tea Party. Most of us know that a group of protestors dumped the cargo of tea from a ship tied up in South Boston. They opposed the Stamp Tax to begin with.
But that was the most famous first. Others followed. The political movement grew, as grass springs from the fertile soil of protest. Six months later, a clone of the Boston Tea Party occurred in Chestertown, Maryland. Then, again in October, at Edenton, NC; women circulated a petition to abolish the Stamp Tax. Political Activists all of them! A grass Roots movement had taken root.
The term, Grass Roots was born in 1912 when a Progressive Politician coined the words in a speech to describe a natural and spontaneous phenomena as the grass grows from the local soil. Grass roots referred to a local movement: protest, voter registration, petitions, demonstrations, as well os organizing, that could swell to a popular position in the political realm.
The basic idea is to expand the things that are wanted, to improve a situation popular with the individual voter by joining those ideals into a loose, unified bargaining chip that can be played in a climate that explains the ideal as the will of a majority of American voters.
In the beginnings of our country, there was no electronic dissemination available. Even print was fairly in it's infant state. Thus was the Broadside used to relate those ideas to everyone, anyone that would read. The Broadside was a roughly newspaper sized ad (blog) that was printed on one side which made it handy to be distributed in shop windows, walls, etc. reflecting the local happenings. Usually political in content. From this media also came the spread of political cartoons.
Perhaps there is much wrong with the Tea Parties. However, there is much right! Remember, if there are no waves, voters will not want to trim the sails! The larger the waves, the more uncomfortable the boat ride. The problem that arises not to swamp the boat.
From Wikipedia, “The Tea Party focuses on smaller government, fiscal responsibility, individual freedoms and upholding a conservative view of the Constitution.”
JAS
This blog is the text portion of the American Broadside #3
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