Home / Top Story / Hundreds Gather At Tax Day Tea Party

Hundreds Gather At Tax Day Tea Party

Hundreds of area citizens gathered in the parking lot of Opi’s in downtown Rome to voice their opposition to taxation and government spending.

“It’s time for Americans to know we have a voice. We want to call the president into his boss’s office and let him know he works for us, not Congress,” said Layla Shipman, one of the event organizers.

Similar events are being conducted all around the nation as citizens look for a way to show their frustration with the economy and government ways.

Shipman said she and a few friends decided to get the ball rolling on a local event and spread the word mostly through e-mail, Facebook and local media sources. She said they expected a crowd of as many as 400, and at noon the parking lot was hosting about 150 people.

Several politicans were expected to speak at the event, including Rome’s Sen. Preston Smith, and live music was provided by Buck & Duke and Matt Chambers. At about 1 p.m. tea was to be dumped into the river as symbolic reference to the Boston Tea Party 1773.

Shipman stressed that despite signs in the crowd targeting “Obama economics,” the event was for Americans, not one political party or the other.

“It’s a non-partisan event. It’s for everyone to let their voice be heard,” she said.

One event-goer, Melvin Hanson, said he is tried of paying income taxes and wants to see a change in the way the American people are taxed.

“We pay all this money and then we have no say-so in what gets done with it. I personally don’t want my money paying for someone else’s medical insurance,” he said. “We might as well move to Europe if that happens.”

Shipman also mention socialized health care as a hot-button tax issue.

“This country was founded on capitalism,” she said. “And we’re opposed to socialized health care and socialism in general.”

Shipman conceeded that taxes do pay for a lot of important American needs, such as sidewalks, roads and public schools, but she said a lot of American tax money is wasted on things that don’t serve all Americans.

Matthew Farris, a Roman who was wearing an American flag shirt, said he disagrees with much of what the Obama administration has planned and he hoped his presence at the tea party event, as well as those other events across the nation, would grab the attention of the president.

“I didn’t vote for him, but I hope he does good. It’s just there are so many things he wants to do that won’t serve America to the best of his ability. There are people out of work and losing their houses, and something needs to be done about it. That’s why I came here,” he said.

Several Romans, including Shipman, planned to head to Atlanta for the tax day tea party to be held in that city later Tuesday.

Comments