Tea Party Movement Planning National "Strike" Against Corporate America On Jan. 20

Tea Party Movement Plans "Strike" for Jan. 20


As the one-year anniversary of President Obama's inauguration nears, the Tea Party movement is planning a "strike" against corporations they call responsible for "funding socialism" and "backing the leftist agenda" of the new president.

Liberal politicians benefit from "large donors, labor union thugs, Hollywood elites and major media propagating our destruction," contends strike organizer Allen Hardage at the Tea Party Patriots web site.

In the wake of the economic downfall and the financial and auto bailouts of the past year, the tea party movement sprang up to represent conservative voters who felt disenfranchised. The election of a Democratic president intent on promoting new government spending on things like health care has spurred on the movement, prompting protests against big government and its ties to big business.

Hardage writes that on Jan. 20 "the TEA Party movement moves into the next phase, TEA 2.0, of taking our country back... We will demonstrate our power and reach to those companies who employ individuals backing the leftist agenda in every major city, every congressional district and every small rural town in America to spread one unified message. That message is simple: Stop funding socialism."

Hardage told Talking Points Memo that he will not release the companies which the strike will target until Jan. 20. but that it will focus on businesses "that are the largest supporters of the most liberal members of Congress as well as those that support extreme liberal media outlets."

The strike has gained some interest online, where more than 4,000 people have shown their support for the event on Facebook and other sites. If the strike proves ineffective, according to Hardage, the tea partiers will hold a march on Feb. 27, as well as a national boycott "of all of the companies that do not stop donating to people like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd et al."

Republicans have tried to capture the energy of the tea partiers. GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann said in a radio interview on Dec. 29 that if the Republican party wants to succeed in the 2010 midterm elections, it needs to "embrace the tea party movement with full arms."

But Suzy Khimm of Newsweek points out that the movement "has yet to pay off for the Republican Party in terms of small-scale donations─the kind of grassroots support that proved critical to bringing Obama and congressional Democrats to power last year."

Up-and-coming conservative politicians like Marco Rubio in Florida, however, could try to bring tea partiers into the Republican fold as he battles Gov. Charlie Crist in a GOP Senate primary this year. If the tea partiers succeed in electing politicians like Rubio, New York Times columnist David Brooks writes, "their movement is likely to outgrow its crude beginnings and become a major force in American politics."


Sources: CBS News, Tea Party Patriots, Newsweek