Tea Party and Occupy wander around the Land of the Radioactive Tumbleweed
Big Tea Party rally in Eastern Washington, I see. Â And this is a booby prize if there ever was one.
As an incentive toward attendance, organizers have said that a participant at the rally will announce a run against incumbent nine-term Congressman Doc Hastings of Pasco at today’s rally, also in John Dam Plaza.
Wait. Â We get to find out someone running for Congress against an entrenched incumbent?
Organizers aren’t publicizing the candidate’s name ahead of the announcement, but the hope is that the announcement will generate the kind of local political buzz seen in late 2009 when former pro football player Clint Didier, now a farmer and businessman in Eltopia, announced his bid for Sen. Patty Murray’s seat at a Tea Party rally.
Somebody like former professional football player Clint Didier, you say? Â Who is it?
Apparently just some guy or other. Â Â Tea Party member to run against Doc Hastings. Â A National Sales Tax Advocate. Â “Ugh” indeed.
At least we get the entertainment value of reading Tea Party activist reactions to Doc Hastings shilling for Mitt Romney.
So, you know.  As this is what we will get in the General Election, in the vacuum where there is no Democratic Party… I will reiterate from my previous post.  Draft Dennis Kucinich!  Yes.  I know Dennis Kucinich would win about as much percentage of the vote as Gordon Allen Pross, but since he’s looking around for a district…
(Yes, I’m kidding. Â Mostly. Â Hm. Â Ready to knock around Jay Inslee a bit?)
Go with the Tea Party candidate, for no other reason than to bump his position of power to some other Republican waging the same environmental wars.
To the other side of the ledger, Portlanders (mostly) flooded in for an “Occupy Hanford” rally. Â They probably hate the local write-up.
Speakers repeatedly reminded the crowd that they were there because Richland is next to the most radiologically contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere, the Hanford nuclear reservation where weapons plutonium was produced during World War II and the Cold War.
“It’s the belly of the beast,” activist Dr. Helen Caldicott said.
But the sun shone, children and dogs played, people danced to the music of Portland bands, tribal members beat drums and good food was eaten.
Along George Washington Way, demonstrators in anti-contamination suits waved signs at passing traffic.
“Go home you damn hippies,” yelled one person from a passing pickup. Â (always gotta get that one into the story.)
But another man stopped in the center lane to have a shouted conversation across two lanes of traffic with the demonstrators.
He tests water at Hanford, and environmental cleanup progress is being made there, he said. He thanked the demonstrators for caring, but said they needed to get their facts straight.
The rally was part theater. One woman in a flowing cape and gas mask waved a rubber salmon and other people blew bubbles because, as their sign said, “Radiation travels thru the air like these bubbles blowing in the air.” A veterans for peace group from Eugene, Ore., flew an American flag upside down on the stage.
Occupy Tri-Cities members may or may not support the rally — depending on who you ask.
Jason Caryl of Pasco had a letter to the editor published in the Tri-City Herald last month saying that Occupy Tri-Cities as a group does not support the rally, which is focused mainly on “anti-nuke rhetoric.”
Occupy Tri-Cities is concentrating on other issues, including removing big money from politics, ending corporate personhood, promotion of buying local, and green and sustainable technologies, the letter said.
However, a message from Occupy Tri-Cities Facebook page to the Herald said the letter had not been approved by the group’s general assembly and does not speak for everyone in the group.
Yeah, there’s probably a bit of a culture clash. Â Take home this message, for instance.
If it’s such a lost cause, why visit the nearby community?
I’m going to Richland to educate those living so close to the site. It’s imperative that food grown around Hanford is tested for radiation and that victims of cancer in the community are tested to see if Hanford is to blame.
And if it is?
Then these towns should be evacuated immediately. That’s the best we can do. It’s too late.
I don’t know that that message goes over well, actually anywhere you visit. Â Yeah, well…