This Is Real Change

Brian Pannebecker of Shelby Township asks a question at a Tea Party meeting in St. Clair Shores on Tuesday. The gathering had no special agenda. Still, about 150 people attended. (WILLIAM ARCHIE/Detroit Free Press) .I'm the dumb looking guy in the far left corner.LOL

This T-shirt expresses one man's views at a Tea Party meeting in St. Clair Shores. The movement could have

There's plenty of evidence to support the everyman theory of the Tea Party, expressed above by the chairman of the Metro Detroit Freedom Coalition, a self-styled Tea Party organization. His comment came at a packed meeting of the group Tuesday evening in St. Clair Shores.

On a snowy, midweek gathering with no special agenda, people still showed up -- about 150. Tea Party demonstrations in Michigan and around the country have routinely drawn hundreds, sometimes thousands of participants. National polls have suggested the general public views the Tea Party, which is not a formal political organization, more favorably than either the Democratic or Republican Party.

And its members have become the public face of voter dissatisfaction and have been given a large measure of credit for delivering a body blow to President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats for the role they played in the upset victory of Republican Scott Brown in the special U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts last month.

Since the Brown election (coming on the heels of Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey last fall) politicians of every stripe have been less inclined to dismiss the Tea Party as a phony grassroots outfit of fringe bigots and haters, as some on the left did when the movement took off last spring and summer.

Republicans, meanwhile, have tried to enclose the Tea Party in a warm, albeit self-serving embrace. State Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, a Rochester Republican and 2010 candidate for attorney general, was on the agenda of speakers in St. Clair Shores. His speech was peppered with kindred-spirit language.

"It's our responsibility to take back our country."

"This is America right here."

"You all have to stand up and say, 'No.' "

'We have a common goal'

In Oakland County, 9th District GOP Chairman Glenn Clark has taken on an alter ego as a Tea Party activist, organizing protests mostly aimed at the district's Democratic U.S. Rep. Gary Peters. Clark said it's a natural fit. The Tea Party, he said, is "bringing together the former pieces of the Reagan coalition."

an impact on the 2010 elections. (Photos by WILLIAM ARCHIE/Detroit Free Press)

Hope Is Not Lost

By Dave Jones, Macomb Daily Special Writer

MEDEFCO might just look like a collection of letters to some, but to many like-minded people it is a glimmer of hope.

It was less than one year ago that Bill Hollister — "Wild Bill" to those who know him — attended a Tea Party event. He walked away inspired.

Tuesday night, the passion continued when the group met at Barrister Gardens in St. Clair Shores.

He said he had been outraged for a while at what he had learned and had been seeing from his government. It was then that he decided to act.

"We're trying to educate what constitutional principles are," Hollister said. "And how our government in all levels has veered far away from those principles and that's basically how the government has gotten into the mess that it's in today."

And with that was born MEDEFCO (Metro Detroit Freedom Coalition), a Tea Party group — formed along with countless other groups around the country — a grass-roots level campaign to resurrect

and revitalize the ideals set forth by the Constitution of the United States.

In the views of Hollister and dozens of others in attendance at MEDEFCO's monthly meetings, those ideals have been lost.

It was April 15, 2009, that Tea Party groups first formed and staged events — various protests and letter writing campaigns, among other things — as a way to influence policy and government actions. Their intent is to keep the power in the hands of the people and the taxpayers instead of a powerful centralized government.

And now — with MEDEFCO — the spirit of those first groups has made its way into Macomb County.

"We're about preserving the Constitution," said Ken Matiyow, a member of the MEDEFCO Board of Directors. "We're here to protect individual liberties and we're for candidates who stand for the Constitutional guarantees we're all entitled to.

"And it's really important," Matiyow said. "Because many people don't understand what a Constitution is really for."

Beginning with eight people seated around a restaurant table, the group's numbers have grown to as many as 200 with the potential to fill banquet halls and influence the policy they desperately seek to change.

Michigan Senate Majority Leader and Attorney General candidate Mike Bishop said the state budget was passed without a tax increase because of the efforts of groups like MEDEFCO.

"If you had not made your voices heard," Bishop said as the keynote speaker at the meeting Tuesday night, "we would have not passed that budget — this year, too. It's so important that you continue — democracy is only as good as the people who participate. Continue to participate."

Bishop wholeheartedly endorses the Tea Party groups and their beliefs and ideals, saying that he feels connected to them all.

"This group is interested in getting involved," he said. "And it's my responsibility as a representative of the government to make sure I talk to them and encourage them to get involved."

Bishop said that without involvement from Tea Party groups such as MEDEFCO, the government will continue to run without hearing the voice of the people.

"There's got to be a connection at some point in time," he said. "And I want to be here to make that connection."

Since the regime change in the last presidential election, Tea Party groups — named in honor of those who protested British rule in 1773 by dumping British-made tea into Boston Harbor— say they have felt disconnected from the government. They feel that decisions and policies were being made without their best interests in mind. The government's move to a national health care system was seen as a unifying cause.

"There are some entities out there that want to take this country away from us," Hollister said. "But this country does belong to us."