Hundreds expected for Tea Party rallies in N.C., Va.

By Connie Sage

Correspondent

Hundreds of taxpayers are expected to attend local outdoor "tea parties" Wednesday as part of a nationwide campaign to protest what they say is government spun out of control with too much spending and too many bailouts.

In Edenton, tea bags will be collected, put in burlap sacks and briefly dumped in the harbor. In Virginia Beach, packages of pork rinds and tea bags will be gathered and delivered to local members of Congress.

American and "Don't Tread on Me" flags will be waved, music played, protest signs displayed and pocket-size copies of the American Constitution handed out at many of the Tax Day Tea Party rallies.

Kill Devil Hills, Elizabeth City and Currituck County also are among 29 North Carolina localities planning events as part of the so-called "tax revolts." In Virginia, at least a dozen municipalities, including Newport News, are taking part.

The local protests, held on the deadline for federal taxes to be filed, are among some 500 taking place nationwide, organizers said.

"We're collecting bags of pork rinds because of government pork and tea bags because they're symbolic in the U.S. to protest taxes," said Karen Miner Hurd, one of three organizers of the Virginia Beach rally.

The "silent majority" feel they're working and paying their bills but that there's nothing they can do about historic levels of state and federal spending, said Dallas Woodhouse, director of the non profit Americans for Prosperity, based in Raleigh.

"They think they're alone," Woodhouse said. The protests are, "quite frankly, cathartic to people - it empowers them."

Woodhouse said the events are non partisan with as much anger and frustration directed at Republicans as Democrats.

"These bailouts to the car companies, the idea of bailing out people's mortgages, that's when people said, 'I've had enough. I pay my mortgage. I pay my taxes - I shouldn't have to pay someone else's,' " Woodhouse said.

Edenton was the site of the Edenton Tea Party, the Oct. 25, 1774, gathering of 51 leading women from five northeast North Carolina counties who signed a petition protesting highly taxed British goods. It was the earliest known example of a purely political action on the part of American women, and the teapot is the town's symbol.

Except for rallies in Charlotte and Raleigh, the Edenton Tea Party is expected to be the largest in the state because of that history, Woodhouse said.

Bob Steinburg, head of the Chowan County Republican Party, said the Edenton rally on the old courthouse green gives local residents an opportunity to re-create history.

"The message is the same," Steinburg said, that taxpayers aren't being heard, that there's "taxation without representation."

More than 500 people are expected at the Virginia Beach rally and at least 200 in Edenton, according to organizers.

Hurd said she, like many other Tea Party organizers across the nation, had never been involved in a political activity before.

"These are not the same old people who are always frustrated by the expansion of government, the erosion of personal liberties and high tax rates," Woodhouse said.

At a Wilmington rally held Tuesday, 200 people were expected, he said, and 1,000 showed up. "We asked how many people were doing some sort of grass roots activism for the first time; it was three-quarters of the crowd," he said.