Happening Now: Baton Rouge Tea Party

Today is Tax Day, but instead grudgingly crawling through a long work day murmuring about taxes under their breath, conservatives are “protest[ing] against out of control government spending.” (Tax Day Tea Party) This is a national movement with organized events happening around the country today. Several are going on right now in Louisiana and the Baton Rouge coalition is at the State Capitol from 1-3 pm. We’ve received reports via Twitter that nearly 1,000 people have shown up at the protest.

This is, for obvious reasons, quite a big story. We’re working on getting more details so we’ll update you when we get word. I’m reaching out to the Republican leadership to hopefully get a statement about this event and their reactions. I read an announcement yesterday about this event from the President of the LSU College Republicans that stressed the importance of this event. I’m also reaching out to him about a statement.

But, to be honest, I’m not really that surprised. Louisiana is a traditionally strong conservative state, so now that the White House is no longer Red, I imagine we’ll see more activity. Stay tuned for more information.

[Update: 04/15/09 6:25pm] Reviewing the Twitter stream, we found the following picture that clearly shows a mass of people. From this picture, we can clearly see that the aforementioned 1,000 person attendance is believable. Credit to @jacobluneau for the picture. Click the picture for full size.

Baton Rouge Tea Party