At tax day rally, tea partyers vow to be heard

EVERETT — The protesters waving signs against government spending flooded blocks of sidewalk on Pacific Avenue on Thursday and chanted “Coming this November, we will remember.”

They soon reached the Snohomish County campus, where a woman in the Revolutionary War-style hat was one of the first people to take the podium. Michele St. Pierre delivered what might have been the theme for this year's tax day tea party.

“Turn off your TV,” said St. Pierre, a supporter of Texas Congressman Ron Paul during his 2008 presidential run. “Yelling at your TV doesn't qualify as political participation.”

The 55-year-old from Stanwood urged people to study the Constitution and learn the procedures used in the Legislature and in Congress. And she urged them to vote.

The crowd of more than 500 formed one of numerous tea party rallies held throughout the country, including several thousand who gathered in Olympia.

The tea party returned to Everett a tad bigger, but also calmer, on the anniversary of its first tax day rally.

Some people held signs using Soviet hammers and sickles to make points about big government, while the occasional protester yelled something about Bolsheviks in reference to Democratic Party leaders.

Unlike last year's event, which had few political candidates, this year's lineup of speakers included 10 Republican candidates running for Congress, the Legislature or the Island County Board of Commissioners in 2010.

“I'd never thought I'd see the day when the government would run car companies and mortgage companies and banks,” said Snohomish County Councilman John Koster, who is running against Democratic U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen in the 2nd Congressional District. “While families are struggling to get by, the Legislature responds by raising taxes on you, and Congress is considering doing the same.”

The message went out to an audience that included Doug Phillips, a 47-year-old from Snohomish who runs several Subway delis.

“I think taxes are too high, government's too big,” Phillips said. “We need to cut both by 50 percent, taxes and spending.”

Specifically, Phillips was critical of the U.S. Department of Energy, mass-transit programs that fail to attract riders and the federal stimulus package. He had plenty of company.

Another source of frustration among the protesters was the Democratically controlled Legislature's recent decision to suspend voter-approved Initiative 960 to raise taxes. State Rep. Mike Hope, R-Lake Stevens, criticized increased taxes on mass-produced beer, bottled water, soda and candy.

“It's a very regressive tax that exempts what Seattle enjoys,” like microbrews, Hope said.

Not all of the featured speakers were politicians.

Charlie Brown, a 58-year-old Boeing employee who lives in Marysville, planned to get inspiration for his speech by reading the words of President Ronald Reagan. Instead, Brown decided that Reagan's 1964 “A Time For Change” speech was still so relevant, that he would just read the whole thing.

“Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals,” Brown read. “It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always ‘against,' never ‘for' anything.”

Snohomish County Democratic Party Chairman Bill Phillips issued a press release calling the rallies an “exercise in hypocrisy.” Protesters walked down tax-funded roads, he noted, and used tax-funded facilities, such as Everett Station and the Snohomish County Campus.

“Add in that many of the marchers may be receiving Medicare, Social Security or other tax-based benefits such as home mortgage deductions, and the scope of hypocrisy is stunning,” Phillips said.

A New York Times/CBS News poll found that 18 percent of Americans identify themselves as tea-party supporters. The poll also found they tend to be Republicans who are wealthier and better educated than the general public, and when asked, they explained that their opposition to President Barack Obama is based more on ideology than their own financial situation.

Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465, nhaglund@heraldnet.com.