On March 16th, I attended a health insurance reform rally where OFA members and Tea Party members clashed in a wealthy part of town. The event took place outside the office of the district's congressman, Harry Mitchell, a Democrat who at the time had not publicized how he planned to vote.
The highly organized OFA members were instructed to smile and wave at cars passing by, loudly chanting: "What do we want? .. "Health Care" .. "When do we want it?" .. "Now" and to explicitly refrain from engaging the Tea Party members in any way.
Supporters out-numbered the protesters at least 3 to 1. All of the Tea Party members were Caucasian, they had no chants, and had no one organizing them as to what to yell or at whom.
Shouts from the Tea Party side ended up being directed at the OFA members (not the passing public). Towards people of color, a woman yelled, "Who bused you in?" Several women continued asking each other back and forth, "Who bused all of them in?" It appeared to be a sincere question. These women honestly just could not believe that supporters of the bill lived in their neighborhood. A large percentage of the remaining shouts consisted of, "Get a job!" and "Welfare mom!" in demeaning and derogatory tones.
I held this sign:
The message was carefully crafted to break through xenophobic mentality. Both my sister and I found it laugh-out-loud funny to watch a Tea Partier smile and take several photos of me, before it finally sunk in that I wasn't on her side. HA.
My subsequent thoughts and reactions:
Had I read Jonathan Haidt's article "What is wrong with those Tea Partiers?"[1], prior to attending the health care rally, I probably would have agreed with almost all of it. I had heard professors interviewed on MSNBC about racism and Obama, and thought, there must be more to it. I would have been sympathetic towards Haidt's argument that, "It is a taboo on the left to 'blame the victim,' and the left is therefore still prone to charging its opponents with racism".
After my experience, however, I now agree with Frank Rich's article "The Rage Is Not About Health Care".[2] To put it in Jonathan Haidt's own terms, if he were to get out among the Tea Partiers, in the heat of the moment, he'd most likely see only his first argument of Intuitive Primacy at work, and little evidence of his second two theories. Sure, some of the Tea Party members might have been conspiracy theorists. But, that didn't seem to be why they were out there protesting health care reform. And, yes, they had posters related to freedom. However, I didn't get the sense that they genuinely felt their personal freedom was in peril. Rhetoric aside, deep down, I don't believe they were out there because they wanted to preserve and fight on the side of freedom. My experience was an exhibition of raw emotion stemming from hatred of "others". In Haidt's world of moral foundations, these Tea Partiers protesting the health care bill were appeared to me to be motivated solely by the virtue of ingroup loyalty/solidarity. In response to Haidt's article "What makes people vote Republican?"[3], Roger Schank speaks of "a distaste and distrust for people not like us" in his "Report From Florida".[4] In my experience OFA members were targeted as outsiders, even when the division wouldn't have been clear in another setting devoid of posters or chants. Anyone against them must live far far away and look very different even if in reality they don't.
[1] http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/jdh2010020402/
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28rich.html?hp
[3] http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html
[4] http://www.edge.org/discourse/vote_morality.html#schank
