Tea Party Movement Advances in CNY

The Tea Party Movement is just over a year old, but it has already earned enemies and picked up steam as local groups pop up across the country. The Central New York area is no exception. The CNY Patriots are a tea party based out of Cicero, NY.

Joanne Wilder (pictured left), a Cicero local, started the group last March when she says she became fed up with the way the country was being run. She says it was President Obama's passing of the economic Recovery Act last year that made her decide she needed to take action.

"All the sudden now we're doing bank bailouts; we've got car companies that are going under; we gotta bail them out," she says. "Let 'em go bankrupt. It's the American way."

Over the past year the Tea Party -- both nationally and locally -- has staged protests against government actions they believe are un-Constitutional. During the week surrounding Tax Day this year, the CNY Patriots focussed the theme of their two major rallies on the health care bill, urging attendees to sign a petition that asks Attorney General Cuomo to reject government-run health care for the State of New York.

"An increasingly unpopular President and Vice President, and arrogant and presumptuous House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a soon-to-be-defeated Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have forced a socialist takeover of America's health care system," said Chairman of the Onondaga County Republican Party John DeSpirito (pictured above) in his speech at the Tea Party Express Rally just before Tax Day this year.

Upcoming protests by the CNY Patriots include a rally against Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi May 29th, when she is scheduled to visit Central New York for Cornell University's Senior Convocation.

"We're going to Ithaca!" Wilder declared to the crowd of about 50 protestors who gathered in downtown Syracuse on Tax Day of this year. "She's going to give the commencement speech, but we're going to tell her to go home. Get back on your jet, or your broomstick, and go back to San Fransisco, Nancy."

And their most recent planned protest is against the push for amnesty for illegal aliens in the U.S. They plan to rally in support of Arizona's new immigration law May 11.

For more on the CNY Patriots, listen to this radio wrap here.

Local 'Tea Partiers' Prepare for Tax Day Protest

"The time has come in this country where we're losing our rights on a daily basis," said Joanne Wilder, organizer for the CNY Patriots, as she stopped briefly to talk during her busy day Wednesday preparing Thursday's protest.

When Tea Party organizations began to spring up across the country last year, Wilder decided it was important to start one in Central New York as well. The results of her work showed at Monday's Tea Party Express Rally in downtown Syracuse. Hundreds of people gathered in Clinton Square to protest President Obama's health care reform bill, but one protest in a week isn't enough for her. She says she's hoping just as many people show up to Thursday's 4 p.m. protest against taxes at the Federal Building.

"I've sent emails out all day long to those people to tell them that we started this fire burning in Syracuse; we have to continue," Wilder said. "I'm just hoping they all show up again tomorrow."

But Wilder isn't all on her own as she plans the second annual Tax Day Tea Party Protest, which she says will include music, speakers addressing the topics of health care and amnesty, and a time for the public to address their concerns with the way government is going. Randy Potter has helped a lot, she says. Potter first got involved when he attended Wilder's Tax Day Tea Party Protest last year, and he says he hasn't missed a Tea Party event since then.

"The movement, it seems to me, is gaining strength as we go along," Potter says. "With each passing day we get more members, and since the health care legislation, there's so many people who are so upset about this health care legislation. So we're gaining momentum all the time."

Those who disagree with the Tea Party movement aren't exactly standing by and watching. Monday's rally against health care also brought Obama supporters from the local chapter of Organizing for America. They stood at the opposite side of the block from the Tea Party protestors, holding "Yes We Can" signs and other signs in support of the health care bill.

When I asked John Desantis, leader of Organizing for America in Syracuse, whether his organization would be counter-protesting again at Thursday's event, he declined to comment. He did put me in touch with the man he called his press person -- Michael Czin.

Czin is the Northeast Regional Press Secretary for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and spoke on behalf of the DNC. He said it's understandable that many Americans are upset about high taxes as the economy is suffering and government spending increased in recent years with the wars oversees. But contrary to what Tea Partiers assert, he says Obama's new health care legislation is cutting taxes for middle class Americans.

"There's a lot of frustration with that government spending, but that's getting reigned in now, and that's the President's feeling," Czin said.