Lynchburg “tea party” draws hundreds

The crowd gathered at Lynchburg City Stadium on Thursday night had a message for local, state and national lawmakers: stick to the Constitution.

In honor of Constitution Day, a few hundred Lynchburg-area residents gathered at the stadium for what is becoming known as a “tea party” — a protest of what is viewed as overspending, too much taxation and a lack of adherence to the constitution, particularly by President Barack Obama’s administration.

Lynchburg City Councilman Scott Garrett attended the event and said he saw in those gathered a lot of concern over the current situation.

“I think there’s an awful lot of angst out there,” he said, particularly among people who believed their tax money was being thrown away or used for causes they did not support.

“These are good people that are tired of doing nothing,” he said, also noting the crowd’s disillusionment with Obama.

“We’ve got a very winsome, very charismatic, very articulate, very attractive, very intelligent president, who has, for 20 months told everybody he’s going to be all things for all people,” Garrett said of Obama, “and there’s not enough money in the universe to be all things for all people at all times.”

Including organizer Dana Hale, nine speakers addressed the audience. Among them was Bradley Rees, a Republican seeking the party’s nomination to face off against Rep. Tom Perriello for the 5th District seat in 2010.

Rees said politics has gone awry since the country’s founding, in large part, because of apathy, a trend he noted is reversing.

“I would venture to say future generations will look back at 2009 as the year that ordinary, hard-working Americans answered Abraham Lincoln’s … call for a new birth of freedom,” Rees said.

Rees mentioned the Tea Party Movement’s march on Washington, D.C., last Saturday, and said he saw from that group that “the brush fires of Liberty that Samuel Adams talked about have been kindled, and they are becoming a bonfire all because of people like you.”

Kurt Feigel, a Lynchburg-area Web designer and video blogger, spoke of his own childhood compared to that of his children.

“When I was growing up, I had the illusion of what America was, and this country I was going to inherit as I got older, and I can’t even give my kids that illusion,” he said. “11 trillion dollars in debt … enough is enough.”

“It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope,” he said quoting Patrick Henry, and interjecting wryly, “where have we heard that before?”

He added another Henry quote, that “The constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people. It is an instrument for the people to restrain the government, lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”

Ken Koleszar, 41, of Rustburg, brought a double-sided poster, which he held throughout the event.

One side criticized Obama for unnecessary spending, with the illustration of money being flushed down a toilet, with the other side proclaiming “I’m NOT a racist. I’m a proud American realist.”

Koleszar, who said his father came to America from Hungary, noted a particular distaste for growing socialism among government programs.

“What have they run successfully,” he asked, answering his question with, “not a whole lot.”

“My father fought against communists when he was 19, during the revolution,” he said.

“Here I am now, fighting for what he came here for.”

Garrett said the proof of the movement’s effectiveness would be in how many people take their ideals to the voting booths.

“In the final analysis, if you get 100 percent of the people to actually vote,” he said, “then we win. The system wins. It’s when we get 16 percent of the turnout … silence is tacit approval that what you’ve got, you’ve got.