Guest Piece by Gregg Updike
Here is a little history on the success of genuine grassroots movements and citizen led protest rallies:
In 1990, New Jersey had a dictatorial governor named Jim Florio. There were two major protests held in Trenton New Jersey that summer by a true grassroots group called “Hands Across New Jersey” (HANJ). It was a protest against Florio’s 2.8 Billion tax Increase which included everything including, ironically, toilet paper (people were actually mailing used TP to his office in protest). HANJ was also protesting Florio’s “assault weapons” ban, which effectively made criminals of about 700,000 New Jerseyans overnight.
The law did not ‘grandfather’ current legal owners, and demanded the heretofore legally purchased guns were to be surrendered to the state without compensation. Since NJ required that all guns be registered, the NJ Gestapo knew who bought/possessed the guns and threats were made, but not carried out, against the 690,984 who failed to abide by the law. Many guns were temporarily “stored” in Pennsylvania. “Florio Free In ’93” was the rally cry.
HANJ was NJ’s precursor to the 2010 Taxed Enough Already Party (TEA Party) movement. It was ridiculed by the press, and ignored by the media and the politicians, but Florio overwhelmingly lost his (D) legislature a year later, and then his race in 1993 narrowly to a relative unknown. That heretofore unknown had glommed on to the HANJ movement and ran against a very popular Senator Bill Bradley in 1990. Since no state races were up in 1990, Bradley was targeted by the movement even though he was a federal senator not directly responsible for Florio’s dictatorship.
New Jersey’s Senator Bill Bradley of 1990 is Virginia’s Senator Mark Warner of 2020. Bradley’s challenger was Christine Todd-Whitman, a little known county freeholder who very nearly upset Bradley (Bradley was so shaken he chose not to run again in 1996). Bradley’s narrow two point win in 1990, and Florio’s loss of the legislature in 1991 should have been wake-up calls, but they and the people were arrogantly ignored. In 1993, Florio became a rare one-term governor. Sadly Whitman – now 73 and last I heard was a “moderate RINO” pro-choice operative working out of, ironically, Michigan – was a massive disappointment to conservatives.
The sad fact is, it is very hard for large truly grassroots rallies to occur, unlike the left’s well funded and organized (by whom?) phony rent-a-mob rallies where the professional malcontents and paid protesters (most of whom are otherwise unemployed) are able to spring up overnight and often with violence, invariably ending up trashing the place with all kinds of garbage. The real reason why there are so few conservative counter protests is because most conservatives work full time for a living, are generally not very political, and don’t have the time to engage in constant protests and rallies.
Well, not now! Thanks to the virus ‘pandemic’ and the unconstitutional edicts by dictatorial governors and mayors, we/they now have much free time to exercise our right to peaceful assembly and protest.
To some degree, we/they are lazy, and to some extent, we/they are cowed by the media and its coverage – but not any more – a sleeping giant has been awakened and the governors will find they won’t be able to shove the toothpaste back into the tube. For an example on how we were ridiculed by the media: James Carville, AKA “the Ragin’ Cajun” who served as campaign manager for both BJ Clinton and Florio, was also a TV Talking Head; he called us “Teabaggers”. If any conservative commentator on FOX ridiculed the left’s protesters like NOW, in such a derogatory way, he/she would have been Schiff-canned in a heartbeat.
The bottom line: These dictatorial governors can threaten and ignore us protestors all they want; the media can mock and downplay our rallies all it wants, but once you get ordinary working law abiding citizens aggravated enough to come together in a real genuine grassroots protest movement against a specific politician or political party, they are toast. Ask Florio, ask the thirty five or so NJ Democratic legislators (they lost half of their members in the 1991 election), ask Pelosi how she fared in 2010 after her Obamacare bill spawned the TEA Party.
So, go ahead you leftist tin-pot dictators, keep up this economic crippling of your state in your attempt to hobble the US economy and beat Trump in six months; continue to keep your subjects needlessly suffering to further you and your master’s agenda; ignore real grassroot protests, and continue to mock and ignore the soon-to-resume Trump rallies, and you will pay the price when most of your elections come up in 2021 and 2022. You may feel safe from voter retribution because most of you are not up this year, but the people attending these rallies and tens of millions of like-minded people who are not actually participating will have long memories and will remember come your November election.
Years ago, a marketing study showed that every real letter written to an editor of a newspaper, or every real complaint letter written to a corporation or politician, represents the thoughts and feelings of about 5,000 people. I have to believe the same holds true for protesters at these state rallies and at the past and future Trump rallies.
Relent now or Repent later!
That is all.
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