I spoke to a middle-aged white male in an Uncle Sam hat who addressed the idea that the Tea Party was dividing America, "We are dividing it. We're trying to get all the free people together and throw all the people who want us to be Marxists out of here. So, yeah, we're dividing the country. We're dividing it to put it back the way our forefathers wanted it where everybody's free. He's free. We're all free."
This male was convinced that the SEIU and other liberal groups had planted people in the rally to disrupt the protest and make people look like people they weren't. In fact, throughout the course of the protest many of the Tea Partiers were suspicious of the motives of anyone with a camera who was filming or conducting interviews.
Police kept a close watch on progressives, liberals, and leftists who were on the plaza with Tea Partiers. A few individuals from World Can't Wait which had an "End U.S. Illegal Wars Stop Biggest Government Spending" sign were moved to the edge of the plaza. Officers consistently halted exchanges between left-wing and right-wing individuals.
Now, what does the presence of a thousand people at this rally really mean? What does the existence of a Tea Party in America mean for the future of America? How can one contextualize the Tax Day protest in Chicago (and in other parts of the country) and gain something more than just cheap entertainment?
Start with polling data from a recent New York Times/CBS News Poll.
In terms of gender, the poll showed 59% of the Tea Party was male, 89% was White (with 8% being non-white), 46% was 45-64 and 29% was older than 64, which mean the majority of respondents who declared themselves to be Tea Party members are people who would have been in their twenties or thirties under Reagan.
Fifty percent from the Tea Party claimed to be middle class. Twenty-six percent categorized themselves as working class while 15% called themselves upper-middle class. This means a majority of respondents came from the middle and working class and, since Americans typically classify themselves on the class ladder a rung higher than they actually are, most of these folks are probably experiencing the same economic pressures that drive many progressives or liberals to take political action.
Oddly, 70% of Tea Party respondents think their household's financial situation is fairly good. In fact, 8% think it's very good so one could say 78% think the financial situation is at least fairly good. This figure begs the question: What is driving the fear? If these respondents aren't struggling to get by now, why are they protesting a so-called tyranny of taxes? Does this indicate the anti-tax fervor comes purely from ideology and not experience?
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