Tea Party marchers, Unity Walk participants descend on Washington

Thousands descended on Washington for the second annual Taxpayer March, while others gathered to call for unity while commemorating the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Unity DC marked their sixth annual Unity Walk, calling for “building peace by serving each other.” The walk was meant to be an apolitical event respecting different cultures, traditions, and religions. The Tea Party Taxpayer March however had a more clear political message: “We will remember in November!”

The Tea Party demonstrators called for less government, less taxes, more freedom, and threatened to take their frustration to the polls and eventually vote politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama out of office.

“I wanna remain free from your regime and never to surrender to your regime… Our job is to fight the socialist redcoats in Washington,” shouted Tito Muñoz, a conservative radio host speaking at the rally.

The participants in the Unity Walk had a different message:

“The goal of the walk is to really encourage citizens in DC and beyond to see that we do have a shared humanity.”

Shared humanity however had to take a back seat to the Tea Partiers.

“It actually blocked us from coming here for an hour because all of Washington DC is blocked off for the Tea Party movement,” said one Unity Walk participant.

While some Unity Walk participants said they respected the Tea Party’s right to organize and demonstrate, others said; “Everything they espouse seems to be a doctrine of intolerance.”

Though both groups differed in their messages and their delivery, they both emphasized that they were proud to be American.
Ana Puig, a Tea Party activist and the co-chair of Pennsylvania’s Kitchen Table Patriots said the Tea Party stands for limited government.

“We want to take our country back,” she said, explaining that the government should focus on national security and the national debt over numerous other policy issues.

Puig argued that the US government is beginning to resemble the governments of Latin America, where she is originally from.

“The lack of transparency in the government is the same lack of transparency that we’ve seen throughout Latin America,” said Puig. “What’s being done to this country day by day is Marxism through and through and it’s the same thing that was done throughout Latin America during the past two decades.”

She further argued that the US government takeovers, including bailouts and universal healthcare are leading to a loss of American freedoms.

“Big brother taking over small businesses, dictating what people can do and cannot do. The political correctness is out of control in this country. You know, I feel like our rights are really starting to really be violated. And it used to be very different back in the 80s when I moved here,” she said.