Blue State Tea Party Report

posted at 1:53 pm on April 15, 2009 by Slublog

This afternoon, I attended the tea party being held in Bangor, Maine. This is not a big city – the population is just over 30,000. It’s also not a particularly conservative city in a very liberal state. Barack Obama received 59% of the vote in this city. I’ve lived here for close to two decades, and I cannot remember a time when conservatives held any sort of protest.

So as I walked over to the protest, I honestly thought there would be maybe three dozen people with flags and signs. Instead, by my estimation, there were at least 300 people there, if not more, at the peak. Not a huge crowd by DC standards, perhaps, but certainly bigger than I expected given the time of day and the largely inaccessible location close to downtown with limited parking. The mood was jovial, and there were no counter-protests. A few participants tried to engage the crowd in a chant of ‘USA,’ but thankfully, no one was in a chanting mood.

The plan for the day was to wave signs and flags for awhile near the federal building and then walk down to the river that flows through town and dump tea into it. Being polite conservatives, the organizers called the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and asked whether that would be okay. The verdict? Loose tea, but no tea bags. Unfortunately, I had to leave before the party started marching, but I heard it went well.

My favorite sign of the day? “Went to bed a conservative, woke up a threat to national security.”

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