On July 28, 2012, IREHR's Devin Burghart gave a keynote speech at the Western States Center's annual training and skills conference, AMP, an event that drew over 400 activists and organizers from states across the west. Devin used the occasion to remind the attendees of lessons past and to talk about the tasks everyone faces today. This speech is a most powerful indictment of the Tea Party movement, and a call for people of good will—no matter what their principal issue of concern—to understand that the Tea Party movement must be actively opposed by us all.

On Tuesday, June 5, in a hotel meeting room two thousand miles away from a recall election that was being watched coast to coast, the Washington State coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, Woody Hertzog, regaled a small group of Tea Partiers assembled in the Puget Sound town of Silverdale with tales of his recent campaigning trip in the Wisconsin trenches. Hertzog told the group that he and other Tea Party activists from across the country poured into the state, becoming a door-to-door army in support of Governor Walker. The election was still taking place half way across the country, yet it was all these Puget Sound Tea Partiers wanted to talk about.  Midway through the meeting, the results from the Wisconsin special election came in. When it was announced that Governor Walker and other Tea Party supported candidates were victorious, the room erupted in cheers and applause. One older man in the back of the room commented aloud, “I guess we can put away our guns, for now.”

Less than thirty miles southeast of Flint, Michigan, Tea Party activists gathered in Clarkston on September 21 to undo the gains of the 1937 sit down strike that won union recognition at General Motors.

Teamsters President James Hoffa Jr. visited Washington state on September 9 to support the hundreds of union members and their community partners backing the 362 grocery warehouse workers of Teamsters Local 117 in their fight for a new contract. Those union members at the Fred Meyer distribution center are currently working without a contract.

“Good morning Taxpayers!” announced Lasse Lund, looking at the Tea Partiers standing on the snow-covered steps of the Legislative Building. They  were here at the Washington state capitol in Olympia on Saturday February 26, to protest against unions. Mixed among the professionally printed signs and the ubiquitous yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” and American flags, Tea Party supporters held handmade signs with slogans including “Repeal Collective Bargaining of Public Sector Unions,” “Stop Greedy Union Bosses!” “I support the American Family Tax Payer & Gov. Scott Walker,” “We Want a Right To Work State,” “Our Kids Can’t afford your pension,” “Obama, Where is Your Long Form Birth Certificate,” and “My 401K Says I Believe in America. Your Govt Pension Says You Believe in Welfare.”