Thousands of Anti-Tax ‘Tea Party’ Protesters Turn Out in U.S. Cities

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April 15, 2009

Chants like “Give me liberty, not debt” and “Our kids can’t afford you” were heard across several U.S. cities Wednesday as anti-tax “tea party” protesters took to the streets to voice their opposition to big government spending.

Thousands of protesters — some dressed in colonial wigs with tea bags hanging from their eyeglasses — showed up in states from California to Kentucky to Massachusetts, holding signs and reading speeches lambasting the Obama administration’s tax-and-spend policies.

“I have two little kids and I know we are mortgaging their futures away,” one protester at a rally in Austin, Texas told FOX News. “It makes me sick to my stomach.”

The demonstrations are part of a larger grassroots movement against government spending called Taxed Enough Already, or TEA — giving name to the Tax Day Tea Parties — and come more than 235 years after the original Boston Tea Party revolt against taxes.

Protesters gathered in cities across the country.

Shouts rang out from Kentucky, which just passed tax increases on cigarettes and alcohol, to Salt Lake City, where many in the crowd booed Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman for accepting about $1.5 billion in stimulus money. Even in Alaska, where there is no statewide income tax or sales tax, hundreds of people held signs and chanted “No more spending.”

“Frankly, I’m mad as hell,” said businessman Doug Burnett at a rally at the Iowa Capitol, where many of the about 1,000 people wore red shirts declaring “revolution is brewing.” Burnett added: “This country has been on a spending spree for decades, a spending spree we can’t afford.”

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