How tea parties changed activism

Panelists predict more grassroots movements are on their way.

Tea party activists could have a lasting effect on political activism long after their brew goes cold.
Many activists, liberal and conservative alike, will mimic how the tea parties used social media to get national attention, panelists argued during a talk at the conservative American Enterprise Institute Wednesday.
They made the case that technology allowed tea partyers – many of whom are first-time activists – to dominate the national debate on issues like health care without too much effort.
"Folks can now find time to get engaged," Kristen Soltis of the Winston Group said as she presented polling data on the activists. Many tea partyers are in their 50s and 60s, well into careers that prevent them from spending a lot of time on activism.
Now they can get involved simply by joining a Facebook group, Soltis argued.
"Barriers to entry when it comes to political engagement have decreased," she added.
Of course it wasn't tea partyers who pioneered the use of social media for a political purpose. Such sites played a big role during the previous presidential campaign, and Facebook groups about political causes have been around for years.
At February's tea party convention in Nashville, activists attended a session on how the Obama presidential campaign incorporated social media.
But that technology did provide an outlet for Americans who might otherwise have stayed quiet about their issues with government spending and high unemployment. It allowed them to find one another and organize into a group.
Expect more grassroots movements to spring up like that, the panelists said, and expect politicians to take them seriously.
Many lawmakers were caught off guard when tea partyers disrupted town hall meetings over health care last fall. But the experience taught them a valuable lesson.
"More and more, politicians are going to react to what people on Facebook are saying," The Washington Post's David Weigel said.
He predicted that the ease with which movements can organize online will also mean that they are less effective in the long run.
"We're going to see more movements peter out more quickly," he said.
-- Ambreen Ali, Congress.org