Tea Party Crash fizzles out
Tags: Health Care Reform, Washington D.C., Tea Party, IRS, Tea Party Express
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35901.html

After several days of hype and hand-wringing about liberal plans to infiltrate Thursday’s tea party rallies, the great 2010 Tax Day Tea Party Crash did not produce much of a bang in Washington.

... The group that organized the Thursday evening rally, the small-government non-profit FreedomWorks had devised plans to deal with any infiltrators who mixed among the crowd and expressed racist, homophobic, threatening or otherwise offensive rhetoric through chants, signs or t-shirts. FreedomWorks distributed signs reading “Leftist Infiltrator” to be used to identify alleged impostors and FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe urged the thousands who gathered for the evening event to take photos of offenders to be posted online to embarrass them.

... And a group of five American University students, who were on average probably at least 25 years younger than most attendees at the FreedomWorks rally, waded through the crowd with signs ranging from the direct and challenging (“Embrace the state”) to the satirical (“I have a sign” and “Loud noises”) to the malapropically mocking (“No $ 4 educatoin. I don’t wnt it”).

“We’re really just more protesting for the sake of humor,” said Thomas Bollerman, 19, of Ridgefield, Conn., who identified himself and his cohorts as part of a Protest Club at American.

Plenty of rally attendees weren’t amused. The protest club was repeatedly photographed (per Kibbe’s instructions), but also peppered with shouts including “Grow up” and “Get out of here.” And one man wearing an Albany Tea Party shirt and a long braided gray ponytail, who identified himself only as “Spider,” menacingly followed them through the crowd.

“I have a problem with you pretending to be one of us,” he told Bollerman’s crew, his voice quivering with anger, after they made a beeline for a cluster of police vehicles.

When Spider parted company with the infiltrators, Bollerman conceded he was frightened. “I’m still kind sweating and nervous,” he said.