Almost three years after Barack Obama took office, unemployment is higher than it was then. Obama stated in Febuary 2009 that Congress needed to pass the stimulus to prevent the unemployment rate going above 8%. Well thirty months later, the rate is at 9.1% after coming down off the high of 10.2%. To make matters worse, the democratic black caucus has blatantly blamed the TEA Party for the cause of the situation.
Jesse Jackson, Maxine Waters and other members of the causus were in Miami Florida this week to rally the troops to put the blame of the economy and other issues on the TEA Party. Earlier this month Maxine Waters said publicly that the TEA Party should go straight to hell. Her comments on Tuesday included her saying, “We have to stand up and fight. It’s fight time…We’re not afraid of the tea party…In this struggle, we have to define who we are, what the president is doing and not let our voices be overshadowed by the tea party.”
Even the State Representative Frederica Wilson (Miami Gardens) has stated that the grassroot movement is “The tea party holds Congress hostage…They have one goal in mind, and that’s to make President Obama a one-term president.”
Ms. Wilson is correct on half of that statement. The part where the TEA Party is trying (along with many Americans) to make sure Obama doesn’t get re-elected.
Jesse Jackson took the stage of the 10 member panel to stoke the fire of the audience. He asked the members to stand if they had a family member in jail, credit card debt as well as a home in foreclosure, a majority of the audience stood up. When asked who voted for Obama, nearly the entire room stood at that point. Mr. Jackson continued to fire up the crowd by his comments of Dr. Martin Luther King. The tea party opposing Obama, Jackson said, should be called the “Fort Sumter Tea Party that sought to maintain states’ rights and slavery.” he continued, “The tea party is a new name on an old game,” he said. “Dr. King fought a ‘tea party’ in Alabama…He had no weapons, but he confronted the tea party.”
This is where I take offense. Dr King was for human rights no matter what the color of the person’s skin is. He fought against racism and inequality towards all people. Dr King didn’t fight against government destruction of the economy or even the government itself. So why would Jackson even use Dr. King is his speech? To insight emotions. The democrats (republicans too) have always used emotions to get the people engaged in taking action. Emotions are what also create the TEA Party too. People being tired of the government not caring about the American person. That is what the TEA party is about, not racism and slavery. The Democrats have been using those two words to describe the group since it first started. They also claim that the group is filled with “terrorists” and “right-wing extremists.
We will never move forward in becoming a single unit of people when influential people like Jackson, Waters and others keep separating us by race, color or sexual orientation. We have to come together as Americans, nothing more and nothing less, if we want to move forward.