I am a registered independent because I feel neither of the two major parties truly represents my interests. Absent a strong third party movement, the best thing voters who are fed up with the status quo can do is to take the reins and be active and engaged participants in the civic arena and to make their voices heard so they cannot be ignored. In short, be active, engaged constituents.

As a liberal I am quite happy when I see this type of civic engagement among ordinary people and voters when they come out in force in support of things I care about such as the public option in healthcare or when they take a critical eye to the goings on in Washington DC and expose corruption and betrayals of Progressive interests by legislators who claim to represent the Progressive point of view.

However, the Left does not have a monopoly on civic engagement. Conservatives and Libertarians have as much right as I do to take the reins of asserting their fundamental rights and to make their case by being active in the public sphere. Thus, despite my disagreements with them on ideological and policy grounds, I can’t help but notice how effective the Tea Party movement has been at getting the attention of the Establishment and the nation at large.

Sure, they have leaders and a mass media megaphone in talk show host Glenn Beck, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. And the extreme, right-wing views of many of them make for good, sensational television. But my readings and observations lurking in Tea Party-related blogs and discussion boards indicate to me that more is going on under the surface than just racism, xenophobia, gun fetish, anti-Obama sentiment, and gullible, uninformed folks being manipulated in Astroturf efforts by conservative public relations and lobbying firms.

What I am observing (you might consider my online ethnography project on the Tea Parties) is that Tea Party folks are talking the language of taking the reins as ordinary citizens to be engaged in the civic arena.

Here are a couple of quotes:

We need to stop voting by letters the way preschoolers color by numbers. It’s time we take all the letters away and stop taking the easy way out. We need to vote people not parties, and issues not politics. That is what these tea parties and protests are about—taking the government back into our own hands where it was always meant to be. (From bhamteaparty.blogspot.com/)

I’m a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election, I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party neither represented my views nor worked to pursue issues important to me. Now, I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is, I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone who can represent me. Please tell me who you are. Tell me you are there and you’re willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. (from We the People event)

Why is this important and why should we care?

Anyone who feels disenfranchised in the political arena dominated by the two major parties should be paying attention to the Tea Party movement. Because the Tea Parties are the first, high-profile and successful organizing effort that has successfully tapped into the wide dissatisfaction that most Americans have towards the two major parties, government and the direction of the country in general. I always thought that the first, big anti-Establishment movement to tap into this societal anger and disaffection would come from the Left. Apparently the Right beat us to it.

Yes, their activism is unfocused and do not seem to coalesce (yet) into a coherent political strategy and program. For example, they don’t seem to have any plans on running their own candidates in elections against Establishment candidates. Many of them don’t seem to have goals of the big political picture beyond obstructing and defeating Barack Obama’s policies. Many of them even assert that they are against third parties as a political strategy against the major parties. But if they are not for forming a third party, how do they plan on opposing the two major parties? Is this truly a political movement with anti-Establishment potential or more of a Glenn Beck cult of personality?

Time will tell whether or not the Tea Party phenomenon actually becomes an effective political movement against the Establishment. In my readings I am already seeing signs of savvy political sophistication among some Tea Party participants such as this blog and the comment on this post which cite how to take over precinct captain positions as a method of infiltrating and influencing the politics of the Republican Party from the bottom up. Are small-scale, local efforts such as this one going on already but are flying under the radar of popular consciousness?