page_title: Tea Party protests
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Tea Party protests / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Scene from the Nashville Tea Party, February 27, 2009, featuring a woman wearing a cowboy hat holding a hand-written sign reading “Remember: Dissent is Patriotic”
context_page_description: The Tea Party protests were a series of protests throughout the United States that began in early 2009. The protests were part of the larger political Tea Party movement. Most Tea Party activities have since been focused on opposing efforts of the Obama Administration, and on recruiting, nominating, and supporting candidates for state and national elections.
  The name "Tea Party" is a reference to the Boston Tea Party, whose principal aim was to protest taxation without representation. Tea Party protests evoked images, slogans and themes from the American Revolution, such as tri-corner hats and yellow Gadsden "Don't Tread on Me" flags. The letters T-E-A have been used by some protesters to form the backronym "Taxed Enough Already".
  Commentators promoted Tax Day events on various blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, while the Fox News Channel regularly featured televised programming leading into and promoting various protest activities. Reaction to the tea parties included counter-protests expressing support for the Obama administration, and dismissive or mocking media coverage of both the events and their promoters.
context_section_description: The theme of the Boston Tea Party, an iconic event of American history, has long been used by anti-tax protesters with libertarian and conservative viewpoints. It was part of Tax Day protests held throughout the 1990s and earlier. The libertarian theme of the "tea party" protest has also been used by Republican Congressman Ron Paul and his supporters during fundraising events in the primaries of the 2008 presidential campaign to emphasize fiscal conservatism, which they later claimed laid the groundwork for the modern-day Tea Party movement. In late 2008, Young Americans for Liberty, with the endorsement of Rep. Paul, organized a protest called the Binghamton Tea Party for January 24 of the following year where participants dressing in Native American costumes and dumping soft drinks into New York's Susquehanna River, as a protest of former NY Governor David Paterson's proposed 18% tax increase on soda. As home mortgage foreclosures increased, and details of the 2009 stimulus legislation became known, more organized protests began to emerge.
caption: A Tea Party protester holds a sign saying "Remember: Dissent is Patriotic" at a Nashville Tea Party on February 27, 2009.
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