SC tea party activists rally in Washington

Bus loads of tea party activists are traveling to Washington D.C. today to speak against health care reform. From Charleston, a bus of more than 50 people joined together to make their voices heard. Ron Parks is a tea party activist from Charleston that was on the bus.
“There’s about 54 of us on a bus here headed for D.C. We know there’s two other buses ahead of us from Spartanburg and Columbia. So we’re all gonna hook-up, get together and have a nice South Carolina contingency there to see if we can convince our leaders into not going along with this government take-over of health care,” says Parks.
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota invited people to join her on the steps of Capitol Hill to talk about opposition to the Democrats health care proposals. Parks says he expects a big turn-out to show up to the tea party.
“The buzz has it that there’s really a large amount of people that are going to be showing up. A lot of people have taken buses. It’s not going to be like the 9/12 march, which resulted in millions of people, but it’s going to be tens of thousands of people. I think it could be that large which is pretty amazing for something that just started a few days ago. The call went out and people started connecting and talking about it, and once again, purely grass-roots,” says Parks.
In the crowd, several South Carolina lawmakers will meet with attendees.
“We actually have meetings set already. We have a meeting set with Lindsey Graham for 2 o’clock. We’ve got Representative Henry Brown who’s gonna come out a meet everybody on the steps at 3 o’clock. And, there’s about five people here in Clyburn’s district and they have a meeting at 2:30. So, they’re gonna know we are there. It’s gonna be regular people that have shown up during a business day, taken time off work and etc. to go,” says Parks.
Besides health care, Parks says they will bring up other issues such as cap-and-trade when they meet with Senator Graham.
“Cap-and-trade and then you have amnesty and that sort of thing, and those are going to be several things we will bring up and let him know. And, one of the things he does feel is people involved with the tea party is that people are going to be Ron Paul supporters on one side or constitution party on the other side. He feels like it’s just fringe people,” says Parks.
The bus will head back to South Carolina around six this evening.