Loading ...Yesterday afternoon I received an email from the Mid-South Tea Party informing me of an impromptu ‘tea party’ to be held today at Congressman John Tanner’s (D-TN8) office in Millington, Tennessee.
….we urge you to go to the office of Representative John Tanner, 8th District TOMORROW, Tuesday, March 16 at 11:45 am. We will be politely presenting him with our letter of encouragement to vote NO on the bill.
So, as someone always ready for a cup-of-tea, I put on my BCR hat this morning and headed on up to cover the event for BCR. I called FOX 13 this morning to see if they were going to be covering the story, but ultimately no news media arrived on the scene to my knowledge. The exception was that as I took photos and uploaded them to Facebook, I also copied them to WREG at the request of George Brown (WREG’s weather guy).
I arrived at around 11:30, followed soon there-after by the Millington police who laid down some ground rules for us.
Of course we had already started informing the participants not to interfere with the other businesses in the complex where Tanner’s office is located, and I for one shook the officer’s hand and thanked him for being there. Soon after another black unmarked police car arrived and when they noted I was taking pictures of them, they discretely departed the area (or so I thought). Of course, tea party participants are a rather peaceful bunch of folks who respect law enforcement and appreciate the job they do.
A petition was passed around for people to sign and several signed copies were hand-delivered to Tanner’s office.
All in all, around 60 people showed up and lined the sidewalk to express their opinion on the health care legislation now before Congress. At one point, Congressman Zach Wamp (R-TN) drove by in his campaign bus, slowed down and gave a number of honks (he had a noon-time lunch meeting in Munford, TN so they did not stop) as they passed. Overall, that was the rule as traffic drove by, people slowed to wave and honk their horns (you can hear them in the You Tube interview below).
For the most part, it was a very peaceful and patriotic gathering for people to communicate to Congressman Tanner their opinion on the latest health care proposals. As things got underway however, one of the tea party folks (Mark) told me there was a black car across the street taking pictures of them. So not to be out-done, I crossed over to see who would be doing such a thing.
I recognized the car when I got back to my laptop and started to review my photos as being the unmarked police car that I had seen earlier at Tanner’s office. So, I gave him a staring role in a YouTube production.
It was a fun way to spend the lunch hour and I hope that Congressman Tanner will do the right thing and continue in his opposition to this legislation. He voted against it before, and it has only gotten worse since then. In the meantime, here is the message that the Mid-South Tea Party wants Congressman Tanner to hear.
