WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of protesters — some dressed in colonial wigs with tea bags hanging from their eyeglasses — staged boisterous protests modeled after the Boston Tea Party all around the country yesterday, rallying against financial bailouts and the Obama administration’s tax and spending plans.
Organizers used yesterday’s deadline for Americans to file their income-tax returns as a day to mobilize criticism of government spending.
About 5,000 people jammed the streets around New York’s City Hall, where conservative icon Newt Gingrich spoke.
“Tell every person you know . . . and tell them to contact their sena tors and their congressmen with a very simple message: Vote against the upcoming budget of big spending, big deficits, big bureaucracy, big politics, big taxes,” he urged.
Retired NYPD Lt. Sean Jordan, 43, of Westchester, turned up with his 17-year-old son, Connor, both bearing signs describing their disgust with the economy.
“UNCLE,” screamed Jordan’s sign.
His son’s placard read, “I’m 17 and I Owe How Much?”
More than 1,000 people gathered in Albany, carrying American flags and anti-tax signs and singing patriotic songs. Some dressed in Revolutionary War garb, and one came as Uncle Sam.
In Washington, organizers said the US Park Police nixed a plan to dump a million tea bags in Lafayette Park across from the White House and prohibited an event at the Treasury Department, while hundreds gathered in the pouring rain.
After someone threw a package that looked like a box of tea over the White House gate, the Secret Service used a robot to inspect the package, declaring it safe.
“This is a matter of liberty. We’re here to break the chain of taxation without representation,” said Abraham Mudrick, who traveled from Oregon to DC — which he called “the belly of the beast” — for the event.
Although Mudrick acknowledged taxpayers are represented in Congress, he said, “My elected officials aren’t doing what I want.”
Additional reporting by David Seifman in New York, AP