The Boston Tea Party may have happened in 1773, but tea party enthusiasts are still brewing political activism.
The Tea Party Patriots are self-proclaimed true conservatives who are visible and vocal with criticism of many aspects of Democrat and Republican politics alike. Recently joining their ranks was former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
According to their website, they are “committed to standing together, shoulder to shoulder, to protect our country and the Constitution upon which we were founded.”
Christen Varley, the president of the Greater Boston Tea Party, said the organization’s main goal for the future is growth in group involvement and membership.
“The whole point of our group is to get people involved in electoral politics,” she said. “We are working on expanding the organization.”
Thousands of people attended the Tea Party Express rally on the Boston Common on April 13 to hear Palin speak.Varley said they collected over 1,000 names for the Greater Boston Tea Party at the rally.
“We are looking to either hook people up with existing groups or assist people in forming new organizations,” she said.
Varley said the group is distributing candidate questionnaires for state- and federal-level candidates to share with members.
“We are posting information online and making that available to members and the public,” she said. “Our approach is expanding our organization for people who want to get involved and pulling information from candidates so we can distribute it to the public in general.”
Boston University College Republicans Secretary and College of Arts and Sciences junior Matthew Stern said the popularity of the Tea Party is increasing.
“The Tea Party has garnered the support of almost one in five Americans,” he said. “Their cross-country organization has kept them in the news loop for 14 months and counting.”
He said many people are unaware of the backgrounds of most Tea Party members.
“What most people choose not to recognize is that most Tea Party activists are more religious and better educated than the general public,” he said. “And almost a third do not actually consider themselves conservatives, and this is telling of the broad base of support they are achieving.”
He said he hopes that in the future, the Tea Party will continue to be increasinglyactive in the political world.
“The Tea Party communicates the important goals of fiscal responsibility and smaller government for the future,” he said. “I hope that the Tea Party will embrace Republican Party candidates in the fall elections so that they can bring balance back to Congress, in efforts to bring our country back on the right path.
“Like their Republican counterparts, Tea Party activists understand that while it is important to ensure the equality of opportunity for all Americans, there should never be a government system in place to ensure the equality of results,” he said.
BUCR member-at-large and College of Communication freshman James Sutton said the Tea Party is important because of how it spreads awareness and reaches out to the average American.
“While I myself am not a member of the Tea Party, I believe that they have helped to raise public awareness on issues that were previously not making headlines,” Sutton said. “For the first time, Americans across the country are aware of the national debt and the excesses of government spending. The Tea Party represents these people that want to do something about. I hope that the Tea Party will continue to raise more public awareness in the future.”
Varley added that the Tea Party is only continuing to grow.
“The fact that [in Boston] we were four people just over a year ago and now we’re about 1,000 or more, I would consider that successful,” Varley said. “People want to get involved.”
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