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Tea Party Protests: 'Ni**er,' 'Fa**ot' Shouted At Members Of Congress
Abusive, derogatory and even racist behavior directed at House Democrats by Tea Party protesters on Saturday left several lawmakers in shock.
Angry crowd of Tea Party zealots shout at members of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 20, 2010.
REUTERS/Larry Downing Preceding the president's speech to a gathering of House Democrats,
thousands of protesters descended around the Capitol to protest the
passage of health care reform. The gathering quickly turned into abusive
heckling, as members of Congress passing through Longworth House office
building were subjected to epithets and even mild physical abuse.
A staffer for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) relayed word to reporters that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-M.D.) had been spit on by a protestor (the protestor was reportedly arrested by Capitol Hill police). Rep. John Lewis (D-G.A.) a hero of the civil rights movement was called a "n----r." And Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was called a "faggot," as protestors shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams. Frank, approached in the halls after the president's speech, shrugged off the incident.
But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.
"It was absolutely shocking to me," Clyburn said, in response to a question from the Huffington Post. "Last Monday, this past Monday, I stayed home to meet on the campus of Claflin University where fifty years ago as of last Monday... I led the first demonstrations in South Carolina, the sit ins... And quite frankly I heard some things today I have not heard since that day. I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus."
"It doesn't make me nervous as all," the congressman said, when asked how the mob-like atmosphere made him feel. "In fact, as I said to one heckler, I am the hardest person in the world to intimidate, so they better go somewhere else."
Asked if he wanted an apology from the group of Republican lawmakers who had addressed the crowd and, in many ways, played on their worst fears of health care legislation, the Democratic Party, and the president, Clyburn replied:
"A lot of us have been saying for a long time that much of this, much of this is not about health care a all. And I think a lot of those people today demonstrated that this is not about health care... it is about trying to extend a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful."
102 Comments so far
Show AllWho is shocked that this group or nitwits are racists?
Point taken, but it goes deeper than a group of nitwits and racists. The American people are angry, afraid, and powerless, and you and I know it - we are part of it. While the manner in which it is coming out is ugly, no one should be surprised that it is coming out, nor that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
We Americans have always been racist, and to an extent, angry. It subsides in good times (or the illusion of them), but comes out in spades when the curtain falls away. Well, the curtain is falling away.
I have always maintained that I do not disagree with some of the reason for the Tea Partiers. They are talking their truth to power, as ugly and stupid as it may sound. What's coming out of them has come out of many here on Common Dreams when aimed at those we perceive to be against us.
Clearly, the power system in this country (and much of the world) is working against the people, and eventually, anger is going to boil over. And in many respects, it is well-deserved anger.
Where I diverge with the Tea Partiers and many here on CD is in the belief that our righteous anger is all we need. It is not. Anger, without well-directed and focused action, feeds into the system's power and works against us. The angrier and uglier and more violent we get, the more reasons the system has to use force to quell our violent uprising. It is, in Chris Hedges words, what will move us from "inverted totalitarianism" (what we have now) to "classical totalitarian" (think Nazi fascism or Soviet communism), from the use of fraud to the use of force. http://tinyurl.com/yz7neby
This seeming inexorable march to a dark future will happen unless we decide it won't. There are many examples of people who make good, positive, enlightened changes without the use of hatred and force. We need to learn from their examples. The alternative really is very ugly.
And on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the all we did with our anger is shout "war criminal!", and "imperialist!" - and the some peacenicks even wag their fingers at us for even that.
There was also some genuine anger at our demo too. The ANSWER (Lenninist-vanguardist) leaders at the front of the the antiwar march also viciously beheaded and mutilated a Dick-Cheney bemasked effigy in front of the Halliburton DC offices. But it was a Saturday, and we were "shouting at empty buildings" as Cindy subtly criticized us for in her speech before the march started, no one saw it except some cops.
And, fortunately, being as it was at the very front of the blocks-long march, few actually saw it and had their neo-pacifist (aka passive-ist) sensibilities offended.
>>But Clyburn was downright incredulous, saying he had not witnessed such treatment since he was leading civil rights protests in South Carolina in the 1960s.
He was under the illusion that racism was no longer an issue in the United States. Look at this as a sort of "Coming out party". These people have been lying low for a few decades and now feel the time right for them to express themselves again.
This is not limited to the USA. There an ebb and flow the world over in every nation. See Le Pen in France, or the various "white nationalist" parties in Russia and the Netherlands.
As economies suffer and more people thrown out of work, there will be more fingerpointing and a good deal of it will be at the the visible minorities and immigrants.
Racism in the US is a protean shape-shifter. It never goes away. It always manages to re-package itself.Lately, it has gotten slicker-but these guys are a throw back to the bad old days when racism was right out front, for all to see.Maybe that's not such a bad thing, since it will destroy a lot of people's carefully constructed illusions.
This is all happening because Lincoln didn't finish the job.
I'm not sure what you mean by your comment.You're talking about the man who offered to pay the South $4 billion in 1864 dollars to compensate the slave owners for the 'loss' of their slaves if the South would agree to give up its demand for independance and return to the Union.So what, exactly, do you mean by "finish the job"?
I think he means Lincoln letting General Sherman burn the South to the ground as punishment for secession, but I'm not sure. That's the problem with trolls; they have no mind and they type with one finger at a time. That's also the problem with Tea baggers: if you ask them "why", nothing comes out of their mouths and they adopt a lost, stunned look on their faces, just realizing themselves that they don't know themselves the reasons for their emotions; that they are just parrots for right-wing radio and TV.
But instead of vilifying them, perhaps we should realize that these armed idiots are the tip of the revolutionary spear. If they could just be organized into a third party: say the third biggest party: the Libertarian Party, well then we might overwhelm the duopoly.
This synergy was used in the American Revolutionary war as well. Many Colonists were outraged by the police state growing up around them, with Redcoat troops shutting down cities like Boston. While they signed their name with an "X" and could not read they had an important role to play in the resistance. That is how I view these people. They are ready to take this incompetent government to task for it's crimes.
We should join them, and support them verbally. Let's cut this government down by 90 percent and start over. I don't think we could do much worse than the way it is right now.
TJ
Yeah, I was afraid that toasting the entire South is what he had in mind.That would have worked out well. Sherman's march helped end the war, but it left a wound which has barely healed to this day.You probably know that you can actually see the route of the march from the air-a 'scar' of post-march vegetation etc. Very weird.It was like a 19th cent. version of carpet bombing, only in a way worse, because it was done face to face by human beings with rifles and bayonets and torches,not from 30,000 feet up.
Yup, starting all over may be the way to go, but I would have some problems signing on with a bunch of Tea-baggers as 'useful idiots' to create a third party alternative.I'm not a libertarian-more of an anarcho-sindicalist if I'm anything, and also somewhat of a cynic. A stranger in a strange land.
Well, I'm a Naderite and a left-libertarian, or a socialist-libertarian, and my whole family is hard-core NeoCon, and I have a lot of trouble just sitting in the same room with them. But we agree on a very few precious things like the TARP robberies, the cost of eternal war, being forced to buy insurance from a private for-profit company or face fines/jail, overt executive compensation, gas prices by the oil cartel etc.
It's not much, but it's Common Ground.
Once we hang all the lobbyists on K street for giving trillions away to bankers and close that Lobby practice, then we can argue our separate positions on how restored Democracy should be structured.
I really don't think we should wait another three years to do this. The time to demand 100 percent resignations from congress and the Executive branch is Now.
TJ
I'd love to hang a few reps of the Oligarchy, but if my fellow anarchists are spouting hate language against niggers and fags, then no thanks. We would simply be creating this horror of a nation all over again. The tea baggers (neocons to you) are not fit companions for the socially enlightened. Being angry is not good enough. It's time you learned who your enemies are, Tom.
George, I don't disagree with you.
But for all I know, the racial jeers are being staged by the Congress. I mean, the Democratic Caucus is locking their arms and pretending they are on a Civil Rights March, when in fact they are on an Insurance-Company-Mandatory-Pork-Extortion/Greed-Orgy.
If you want these bums thrown out, you have to focus. Obama is Far Right, but the brainwashed Tea Baggers think he is Far Left!
In the true spirt of the nation: Let's USE em'. Let's throw everybody out and start over.
Diabolical Aye? I mean, George, it can't get any worse than it is right now. We are goosestepping headlong into 1984.
We have to skew this thing away from the master plan somehow.
We have to throw a wrench in this system now, no matter which unsavory bedfellows we wake up with.
Or else it's going to be NeoCon city in 2012.
How does Palin/Cheney sound to you? Nuclear World War for Profit?
No!
We have to overthrow this path on the democrat watch, otherwise, we will loose all right-wing anger in 2012.
Keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer!
TJ
You're making way too much sense, TJ. What you're suggesting just might make a difference and we simply couldn't have that, now could we?
Instead, we should be looking down our noses at these people because they're less "enlightened" than we who are content to stay at home this weekend and listen to the NPR and C-Span coverage.
Since some of them are homophobic and racist we should discount all of the them entirely. If they're wrong about one thing, then they have to be wrong about everything.
Yep, we should just let all this energy and outrage be co-opted by the reactionary elements of the GOP or for the personal aggrandizement of Glenn Beck.
Trying to actually turn seething public sentiment into something productive is at once beneath us and beyond our ability.
It is better that we not even try, then we can't be blamed if we fail.
I'm not surprised one bit. I saw Sarah Palin's address at the first National meeting of this tea party group. While her remarks were seemingly temperate all the code words were there for family values fundamentalist Christians who support guns, God and a white Jesus and are the hard working true Americans to the exclusion of all others.
I'm afraid it's going to get more ugly and fairly quickly.
This will be the gift that keeps on giving for the Democrats. The GOP association with this debacle won't go away.
Wake up. There are Democrat, Republican, and Independent racists. So there are going to be Tea Party racists, too.
If you people don't know it yet, there are a lot of really mad people in this country, and when you get real mad, you say things you normally wouldn't.
It isn't going to get better until Washington figures out that the American people are sick and tired with the way they do things and how they pass our money to Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex, and the banking industry.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I don't know of any Democratic racists who consistently use the kind of vile language & bigoted epithets routinely used by the Tea-Bagger vermin on their protest signs and in their shouts. I've seen three of their events in my State and they are the scum of the earth and as stupid as they come.
'Abusive, derogatory and even racist behavior directed at House Democrats by Tea Party protesters on Saturday left several lawmakers in shock.'
Really?
Given the level of abuse and derogatory behavior exhibited to people around the world by the US, why should it be surprising in the least to these people that they are held in similar contempt.
The 'Jim Crow' nation is just below the skin in the US. And a minor scratch is all you need to bring it to the surface.
At this rate, it is very likely that the 'unthinkable' will happen to Obama.
And just like Kennedy (both of them), the Military Intelligence Corporate Elite will be behind it.
No correlation between Kennedy and Obama. The MIC and the Corporate Elite are Obama's best friends. He has been very, very good to them -- not so much the middle class and the poor. Now if you said C Street I would agree.
The Corporate Elite will keep Obama alive as long as he is useful to them.
The nano-second he isn't, he's history spattered across the pavement.
And, if speculation about Obama being a former CIA agent/asset is true, then he knows what is coming.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Obama is still far too useful to the oligarchs for them to expend him that way. He's the most politically correct traitor to the working-classes one could imagine and a huge percentage of the people who voted for him are about as bright as their counterpart Republican voters and still vote for him again no matter how awful he continues to be because they are deliberately not paying attention unless his policies kick their own teeth in with his initials on the boots.
Absolutely !!!!
"D"
Of course you are entirely correct, metal. Poor America. When I was a kid back in the 50s I read a book called 'Nation of Sheep'. Then the 60s happened, and I saw a ray of hope. But no, we are still a nation of sheep. At least in the last election, the sheep tried to get a leader who would lead them away from the cliff. But that didn't work. I don't hold out much hope for my country.
Let's face it guys,
These tea baggers are right about one thing: We shouldn't be forced to buy a private product like a private insurance policy or face fines or jail.
They are right that it's better not to do anything than to have this oppressive government force insurance premiums upon these people who appear to me to be poor white trash.
They can't afford it, and I don't blame them.
They're angry and we should be too.
TJ
The tea partyers and progressives have one thing in common: they think government isn't doing much for the people. As far as I can tell the similarity ends there.
If Obama had gone out there pushing for Medicare for All -- Medicare, a program we know these people understand -- they would have had a lot harder time with the protests. What would they say? We don't want no stinkin' Medicare? Racism, for sure, but you combine that with the corporate giveaways and the fact that cuts to Medicare have been proclaimed time and time again by Obama. Interestingly, a lot of these mobs got started at the behest of the insurance lobby last summer.
I could be wrong about all this, but Obama's policies are not helping. Repubs aren't being represented in Congress anymore than the rest of us.
"What would they say? We don't want no stinkin' Medicare?"
Yes, they would say whatever Glenn Beck told them to, because they are braindead morons.
And that is EXACTLY why no one with any intelligence should be paying ANY attention to them! Those Democrats who do are just using them as an excuse for being reactionary. Hear that, Obama? We had an election, a candidate promised all sorts of change, he won, and now he and his party are bending over backwards to appease those who didn't vote for them. Do you think the Republicans would bend over backwards to appease liberals? What's wrong with this scenario? The only thing that makes sense is that the Democratic Party is just another tool of the ruling class, the Oligarchy, the Corporations. And that means we are NOT living in a democracy, we are living in an Oligarchical dictatorship. To have any kind of democracy, you need representation by those who have a social conscience--in other words, socialists. It is only in America and other dictatorships that socialism is a bad word.
"...these people who appear to me to be poor white trash."
why did you use a valid issue of a govt mandated purchase of health insurance to express your bigotry?
why don't you just say you're a bigot?
A bigot (in modern usage) is a prejudiced person who is intolerant of people of different ethnicity, race, or class.
there are problems w/ this legislation, the people who wrote it, the people who oppose it and the processes it is going through... but not with the poeple it's intended to benefit.
Dear squidd the MIC Navy troll,
I am allowed to use the term "poor white trash" because I'm in that group. Obama has referred to himself as a half-breed "mutt like myself", does that make him a bigot?
Since I'm inter-racially married, I have even more license to talk about race than you do.
Boy the sun's hot hot hot, and my wife is getting darker and darker.
I love dark women.
They're hot (No, she's not a slave, so don't try that angle.)
But forcing insurance premiums on people from the same insurance companies that deny all coverage now based on "non-customary" exclusions and other trickery is NOT health care reform. IT'S ROBBERY JUST LIKE THE AIG BAILOUT.
TJ
"I am allowed to use the term "poor white trash" because I'm in that group."
from YOUR original post..
"They can't afford it, and I don't blame them."
which is it TJ? "I'm" or "Them"
why did you not identify yourself as such at first?
your obama example is apples and oranges. his comment was in context. your ORIGINAL post was in the third person.
WHY even bring up social class - that was my point - it fits too - seems i touched a nerve -
bigotry does not only include race - but you seem the the need to bring that up now too????
you've a lot posts and methinks i've run in with ya before - i'll just watch you continue to make an idiot of yourself - thanks - slow weekend.
Why must you be so literal squidd?
Are all cows white?
To you they are, cuz Jesus tells you so.
Didn't you ever learn the concept of "subsets" as a school child? Don't you understand that I can be in the set of "poor white trash" and AT THE SAME TIME not be in the sub-set of "tea baggers".
Where did you go to school? Texas?
TJ
i'll just watch you continue to make an idiot of yourself - thanks -
I agree wholeheartedly.
The teapartiers are (often) despicable bigots, but this bill is a piece of garbage and I have a hard time seeing how any member of Congress is really worth defending after this (or given their behavior for the last couple of decades...even before it).
Why not force us to buy cars too, and save the US auto industry?
Hey, could this be applied to other struggling US industries?
A new slogan: Buy US, or go to jail!
"We shouldn't be forced to buy a private product like a private insurance policy or face fines or jail."
Dosent the government force you to carry car insurance too?
But you can choose not to own a car. Just saying, just saying..
"D"
"Dosent the government force you to carry car insurance too?"
No, they don't. I parked my car and I use public transport equipment. I now live in a country that doesn't extort you for right to transport your body around, even if you're poor. You have an accident, you pay the medical bills. Much better system in my humble opinion. But you don't even need a damn car. Cheap public transport is everywhere here.
But with this Bill, as I understand it, there is no such option. You must secure insurance no matter how expensive the oligopolies who rule that sector make it. And my experience is, they always jack your premiums to the moon, sooner or later.
This is not a free market! It's another AIG insurance robbery!
TJ
"Cheap public transport is everywhere here." Huh? Try living in Tucson, LA or hundreds of other towns and cities or out of the way rural areas. The public transportation (if there is any) may be cheap, but it's usually not very convenient or pleasant. And it's often not very cheap either. You DO live in the United States, don't you?
That being said, you are right about this miserable health care reform. It's so obviously another means of getting the American dollar, created by huge corporations who represent the "health care" face of oligarchic oppression. If Obama truly wanted reform, he would have sat down with poor mothers trying to care for their children and elderly citizens trying to live out their last days with dignity, not with insurance and drug company reps.
George,
I'm in Southeast Asia, and tricycles cost about a dollar or two to cross town. Big Insurance companies have no clout here, and if they ever showed up there would be another war because the people are too poor to be extorted like they're being in the US.
I left the US primarily because of Insurance company extortion on Florida premiums (four-fold increase on waterfront), mandatory flood insurance from Jeb Bush's buddies, who then wouldn't pay for damages because wind damage was not part of hurricane coverage. Water damage had to be total. Neither policy would pay unless the house was completely gone. A little subcontracted con-man called an adjuster, who is accountable to no one, came out and denied everything.
They're going to do the same thing with this mandatory health care scam.
They're going to mandate coverage, then funnel everybody into the hospital emergency rooms since every procedure is "uncustomary" and therefore denied. I've already seen this movie, I don't want to see it again.
TJ
Actually, the states force you to have car insurance, not the federal government. The federal government does force you to contribute to the social security fund, so you will get some sort of pension when you retire, instead of hoping that your 401K plan will withstand the fluctuations of the stock market.
Of course, if you are a hedge fund manager, or a broker in the credit default swap branch of Goldman Sachs, you will object to being taxed for SS, but most people are glad to get social security as soon as they can.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
The Tea-Baggers aren't angry about the mandates per se. They hate all social spending their PR handlers and rant radio gurus tell them to hate. They want MORE tax cuts for the rich during war-time and they believe this will create domestic jobs. They don't question bloated Pentagon spending or the criminal nature of the oil/terror wars or torture and will gladly send generations of their progeny to get maimed or killed in any post-2013 Republican expansion of those wars into Iran. You can't get too much more stupid than that.
And yet----it's Obama, a Democrat, who leads us back into Afghanistan. The tea baggers may be paranoid, misled racist Repugs, but the Party of the Democrats is little better. Those who support this travesty are not much smarter than their tea bagger counterparts.
If Obama tried to pull the troops out, the Republicans would crucify him. All we would hear until the next election would be them crying "Traitor!" It would make the "who lost China" nonsense seem mild.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I support neither, but I believe the Republicans, lacking any other true domestic jobs program, will move to expand the wars into Iran and elsewhere with a full military draft. The Democrats might take a little longer on their own to attack Iran. I don't know if they would invade Iran on their own but they would support a Republican invasion of it, and I don't know if they would go to a military draft on their own, but they would support a Republican draft.
I think the Tea Party behavior is a good thing and will perhaps awakens folks that racism in America, or the USA of South Africa is alive and well. This deep amnesia provides for the greatest of racists, and for good folks to witness things as they really are...Where the Sarah Palin's et al, can see "them" across any community, state line and even see them across the oceans as bookie-men coming over to take our so-called democracy.
Didn't know about racisisim in America? I'm shocked! You'd think they never heard of La Raza, or NAACP, or Brown Pride, or Acorn.
Maybe they never applied for a State or Federial job as White these last 40 years. Theres plenty of Rasisim and Reverse Rasisim, Sexism, Agesim, Eliteism, in this Country for anybody. The best answer is to ignore them, take down this perverse article. Let them think we never heard of it or them.
Thans the best non-violent responce.. It's either that or 10 lashes for puplic annoyance :)
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
I was wondering when one of these drunk dumbass Baggers would pustule up to misspell a comment on this article.
Why the hell are you even on this website???
Go to the conservatives websites and voice your support for these racist pieces of shit. Don't bring it here.
Reverse Racism. That's a funny concept. There may have been a few poor or blue collar whites who have been 'passed over' because of affirmative action. How many whites have been lynched because they looked at a black woman too long? How many whites cannot find houses or jobs because of their 'black accent' or the color of their skins? How many whites live with such oppression that they don't even try to improve themselves? You, my dear Richards have no concept of what racism is. You are a fool.