VivirLatino

Well, as most VLati@ readers know, we’re not the biggest fans of the tea party folks around here. Sure there are legitimate beefs that the tea party folks have with the government and with their fellow community members–but their tactics, their anger, their attitude, are all entirely too familiar to those of us who have interacted with various hate groups like the Minute Men, the KKK and the “God Hates Fags” crew that protests funerals of gay soldiers (among others).

Now, it looks like lawmakers are on the receiving end of some of the scarier tactics.

The vandalism began last weekend, when the House debated the health bill for final passage. In Wichita, someone broke the window of a county Democratic Party headquarters with a brick that had “No to Obama” and “No ObamyCare” written on it. Lyndsey Stauble, executive director of the Sedgwick County Democratic Party, said she went to work Saturday morning to clean up the shattered glass around her desk.

“It was surprising and alarming to know that people, when they have so many opportunities for expression in this country, that somebody would resort to a brick,” Stauble said.

Over the next 24 hours, thrown bricks shattered the glass doors and windows of party headquarters from Rochester, N.Y., to Cincinnati. A propane gas line at the Charlottesville home of Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother was severed Tuesday after a self-identified “tea party” activist posted what he believed to be the Virginia Democrat’s address on a Web site and urged opponents to “drop by” to convey their opposition to his yes vote on the health bill.

A brick was thrown through the Niagara Falls district office of Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.), who also received a threatening voice-mail message referring to sniper attacks. The front door to the Tucson district office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shattered. And Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), whose last-minute negotiations to bar federal funding of abortion helped secure the bill’s passage, received a fax with a drawing of a noose and an anonymous voice mail saying: “You’re dead. We know where you live. We’ll get you.”

Stupak is one of my state representatives–and I can only imagine how happy the people of his district are (he’s from the very religious conservative side of the state) with his “betrayal.” As somebody who grew up being prayed over by Christians for engaging in various activities like wearing Democratic presidential runner stickers (I think it was Dukakis!!! ZOMG I’m old), I know how very little room there really is for negotiating with people who believe they are on God’s mission.

And make no mistake about it, Christianity is heavily intertwined with much of the tea partier’s ideology. A Christianity that is heavily steeped in white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. How many times have we seen signs at tea party conventions that scream about the US’s desperate need for a “Christian President”?

President Obama will never be a Christian President as long as he prays with black people. There will always be something vaguely “Nat Turner praying with the slaves” about that image that startles those who are invested in white supremacy. And when God is on the side of those who are so frightened of angry black slaves–why should they negotiate?

So my questions are: what should the response to these aggressions against law makers be? What should the response to the aggressions be by the pro-immigration community? What should the response to those tea partiers who condemn the aggressions be by the pro-immigration community?

Will fellow tea partiers condemn these aggressions?

And why are peaceful anti-war demonstrators under FBI surveillance, but an organization that has incited violence against the immigrant community, women, the LGBT community AND government officials-is only *just now* being recognized as potentially hazardous?

What is it about the tea party that allows so many of us to legitimize it as a valid organization that we don’t want to silence–even as it is pointing in a direction that often leads to really scary and even violent situations? Would we-ARE we-that tolerant of similar radical left organizations?

UPDATE: Just got the news that a bullet was shot through the Republican minority whip’s office. Ay.