Tax Day Tea Party in Panama City April 15th

Tax Day Tea Party organizers Glen and Alice Leirer were the first on the scene to set up Command Central out of the back of their truck directly across the street from the Sherman Avenue post office. They had a sign-in table, iced tea and a truck bed full of signs and American flags, and by the start of the Tea Party at 3:00 p.m., about 200 people had already signed in and assembled along Sherman Avenue.
The media arrived at the beginning of the Tea Party, and by the time they left, around 4:00, a hundred more people had already poured out of their cars to join the Tea Party. This is why the media under-reported the Tea Party attendance. From the very beginning, something dynamic clearly was happening, but the media chose not to stay for the entire event, or even a third of it, and they chose not to return to the scene later in the afternoon to see if and how things had changed.
In fact, things HAD changed, and dramatically so. By 4:00, organizer Glen realized that the rapid growth of the crowd was soon going to overwhelm the post office block of Sherman Avenue. Thus he took to a megaphone to ask the Tea Partiers to spread themselves out over three blocks on Sherman Avenue and to start another line of sign-waving on 15^th Street. And spread out they did! At the height of the Tea Party, people were on both sides of 15^th Street for several blocks.
Around 5:00 p.m., the Sheriff’s Deputy assigned to keep order at the Tea Party reported to Glen that attendance had reached, by his experienced count, some 1,400 people. By that time all the sign-in forms were full, and Glen and Alice were having people sign in on the backs of the forms. Plus, the iced tea had run out, and they had had to call Melissa Hagan to bring in a fresh batch, which she gladly did. Long story short: No one had to tell Glen that the Tea Party crowd had mushroomed!
For almost four hours, the Tea Partiers politely but emphatically made their case for freedom, less government and lower taxes. Some arrived in American Revolutionary garb. Others handed out tea bags, and a few even WORE tea bags. Hundreds held American flags and homemade signs, waved and smiled to motorists, chatted enthusiastically among themselves and made connections that no doubt will produce far-reaching waves beyond Tax Day.
A few of us joined Glen and Alice for dinner afterwards at Sonny’s (whose owner, Wayne Lindsay, has been a stalwart supporter of and good friend to Bay County’s conservatives). After all of us had ordered and finally caught our breath, we just looked at each other and said, practically in unison, “I can’t believe what just happened. Was that awesome or what?!!!” What a gratifying experience it is to see the love of freedom so enthusiastically demonstrated by so many.
Tea Party volunteer Melissa Thompson is doggedly working her way through the sign-in sheets to create an email blast list for announcements about future Tea Parties in Bay County, Tallahassee and Washington, D.C. It’ll take a little time for her to do that, and for the new names to be incorporated into our email blaster’s system, so I hope our Tea Partiers can keep their fires burning in the meantime.
This was truly a grassroots phenomenon. Fourteen hundred citizens, who have been sitting in front of their TVs fuming for the last three months, made a decision on April 15 to exercise their rights to assemble and to speak freely of their disappointment, dissatisfaction, and disgust with their government. This is still a free land where its citizens can peaceably assemble to criticize their government without fear of government retaliation.
Tea Partiers, thank you for your courage, your help, your encouragement, your support. Keep spreading the Tea Party message, and Glen and his team will keep working on the next Tea Party. Hope to see all of you, and many, many more, at the next one!