NEWFANE — On Oct. 2, in solidarity with national marches in Washington D.C. and elsewhere, citizens in Brattleboro will hold a march and rally calling on Congress and the president to bring our troops home now and end U.S. military action in Afghanistan.
Organizers are trying to show the government that Americans are just as concerned with militarism as they are with high taxes, and they recognize that the deficit spending that is garnering so much attention these days is largely a result of the last decade of unbridled spending on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One of the groups sponsoring the march and rally, Patriotic Response to Renegade Government, is a registered Tea Party group, and the event is being listed on the Tea Party events calendar. This could give an indication of just how diverse and grass-roots driven the Tea Party organization is.
The Tea Party's primary claim is to be interested in preserving the Constitution, a goal that Vermonters have worked assiduously towards for the last 10 years or so, countering the Bush/Cheney “unitary executive branch” philosophy that has been left in place by the Obama administration.
The march and rally has support from Vermont's Bread and Puppet Theater, the Vermont Raging Grannies, and Brattleboro's own Constitution brass band. Organizers from the Boston area are also working to bring people out for the march.
Other sponsoring organizations are B4Peace, a group promoting creative events promoting peace, and EMDOVY, a Brattleboro anti-nuclear power group.
Vermont activists know that the original Boston tea party was a demonstration against taxation without representation, not simply a demand for lower taxes and spending. Currently, corporations and the very rich have excellent representation in Washington, while the middle class and poorer Americans have very poor representation.
Tax fairness is the real tax issue driving Americans' anger with government today, and wasteful, unaccountable, and counterproductive spending on undeclared wars overseas is the biggest driver of the nation's deficit.