September 19, 2009

Dear Friends:

This is an appeal to Forum Family members with a big preamble.  This is also a letter of explanation that we believe we owe to our Forum Family members.

Last Saturday members of the Ramon Forum demonstrated on the Streets of Ramona to counter the local Tea Party demonstration that was frankly racist, and anti Obama.

We called ourselves the “Mad Hatters Tea Party” and our strategy was to display signs that would expose the ridiculous consequences of abolishing everything that the Tea baggers described as socialism.  We facetiously condemned such institutions as:

•       UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS

•       VETERANS’ HEALTH CARE

•       MEDICARE

•       MEDICAID

•       AID TO VERY POOR FAMILIES

•       FIRE SERVICE

•       SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

•       FHA

•       POLICE

•       NATIONAL GUARD

•       MILITARY

•       FOREIGN SERVICE.

While we possessed an abundance of enthusiasm and dedication, our posters were somewhat lacking in coordination and planning, and to some of our supporters we even conveyed the mistaken impression that we were “selling out” and to few others that we were even a right wing fringe of the tea baggers themselves.  Nothing of course could be further from the truth—we just put on a satirical demonstration designed to show how far out the right has gone.  We used signs that parroted the extreme ideas, like ‘Close the Socialist VA’ and ‘End Medicare’.

Please be advised that we have not capitulated to the fear mongering right.

Although our message should have been more carefully thought out, we did capture the attention of passers bye— we cannot know how effective we were in the end, but we did try and we were there standing our ground—and that was no mean feat considering we were only 8 (10 at the peak) against a crowd of about 200.

Some of our memberships think that satire is not the best approach when dealing with important subjects like the health care, and this may be true.  However, had we stood there with our standard signs we would have been seen only by those that were looking for us—the choir of liberals in town.  As we faced a large disparity in numbers we needed novel and innovative ideas to get through to those who are just attracted to some catchy slogans without putting any thoughts to them—it is a situation that we encounter on many other occasions.

We see each of these demonstrations as one learning experience too and we assure you that our next action will be well coordinated.  We did learn that satire is a very difficult media with which to convey a serious message.

The appeal

Having said all of these, we would like to make an internal point of our own.  Good ideas need lots of input, and for that we need you participating as much as you can.  Please come and be part of the change we are attempting to make in Ramona.

This letter was composed by Dave, Ron and dutta.  We received a number of e-mails about the counter demonstration on September 12.  There was some confusion.  So, we thought we should have a pow-wow among ourselves.

THE PRESIDENT’S REPORT ON OUR COUNTER DEMONSTRATION ON SEPTEMBER 12

Today the Ramona Forum stood across the street in an attempt to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Tea Party gang.  There were about 200 Tea Party folks and 8 of us.  We called our demonstration the Mad Hatters Tea Party and Ron Selkovitch wore the fun hat.

Most of our signs were facetious, end socialism, end VA, close the library, close the police station, end Medicare, government option health care is socialist plot…..etc.

One lady yelled out the window “Why you want to close the library?”  I answered, “Because it’s a socialist program”, and she responded, oh yea, that’s right!  Generally I think people weren’t reading the signs, just thinking that we were with the larger group across the street.  The cops did look surprised when I pulled out the close the police stations, and one kid asked me who would fight crime if we did closed the police stations?  I told him to ask the nuts across the street!

We had one lady stop by to sign our petition to end socialism.  It was a pledge to end welfare, medical, emergency room use by the uninsured and illegal aliens, Medicare, social security, VA, police library and many more including CalTrans.  She declared that she couldn’t sign it, and we told her we wouldn’t either!  Needless to say, we didn’t have a single signer!

We did encounter a couple of people that knew what we were up to, but generally the passers by honked and we waved our close the VA and library signs gleefully.  I was having blast, but my friend Dutta thought we were wasting our time.

[Editor's note: dutta thought that our satirical message was getting lost, misinterpreted, or wasted.  Since then we received communications that indicated a mixed reception—some were elated, some were skeptical—which prompted the letter above.]

About that time a heckler from the other side started yelling that she was not Obama’s slave and a bunch of other crazy stuff about being responsible.  I kept yelling to hell with the poor, and close the VA, but to no avail.  So I pulled out my big guns, a giant sign that declared “MY GUNS, MY GOD, MY TAXES”, which brought a big cheer from across the street.  Later while I was being interviewed by the local paper, some guy came over and asked me what the difference was between the White House and the Wild Animal Park?  His answer was a racist slur, of course, so I asked if he was one of those racist people that hate Obama because he’s black?  He of course denied that and declared that he would have voted for Condoliza Rice or Colin Powell had they run.  After asking why he would vote for known liars, he left.  I think the journalist took a few notes.

Generally we had a blast and turned a few people away from the tea party idea with our message.  Bit by bit we will marginalize these nuts, as they should be.

Now, an outsider’s look at our demonstration from East County Magazine