Playing Patriots: The Role(s) of Child Protestors in the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Movements

Abstract

This article considers the role(s) of child protestors and activists in both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. Both of these movements and activist communities engage with notions and performances of patriotism, as well as with American history and/or their movement’s place in it. Both movements also seek to imagine/manipulate/engage/educate youth about the nation and patriotism in interesting, and often contradictory, ways. I look closely at the ways in which each movement has represented itself to the outside world, as well as the ways the media has represented each movement in newspapers and online forums such as blogs. I explore the ways in which both movements offer opportunities for their young members, as well as their adult counterparts, to engage in “playing patriots” as part of their protests and their more purely educational offshoots.

Translation of Abstract

En este artículo se analiza el papel o papeles de los niños manifestantes y activistas, tanto del movimiento Tea Party, como del movimiento Occupy Wall Street. Ambos movimientos y sus comunidades activistas se involucran con las nociones y representaciones del patriotismo, así como con la historia de los Estados Unidos, y/o el lugar de su movimiento en la misma. Ambos movimientos también intentan imaginar/manipular/involucrar/educar a los jóvenes acerca de la Nación y el patriotismo, en interesantes—y a menudo contradictorias—formas. Yo [el autor] miro de cerca la manera en que cada movimiento se ha autorrepresentado ante el mundo exterior, así como la forma en que los medios de comunicación les han representado en los periódicos y foros de Internet (como los blogs). Exploro la manera en que ambos movimientos ofrecen oportunidades para “jugar a ser Patriotas” a sus jóvenes miembros, así como a sus contrapartes adultos, como parte de sus protestas y sus más puramente educativas ramificaciones.

Notes

¹ It is worth noting that these themes were also present at the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL.

² Many of the signs at rallies featured a clip-art pink piggy bank.

³ There are some fairly obvious moments in the images and videos of young people at protests in which children do arguably become their parents’ “props,” rather than engaged participants. For example, there is a moment captured at a Tea Party rally in Seattle, WA, in which three children sit in front of the speaker’s podium. The three are holding signs with Tea Party slogans such as “Get your hands out of my piggy bank” and “Give me liberty not debt” while looking completely bored and disengaged (Van Kirk 2010). There are also plenty of images of babies held by their parents or with signs taped to their baby carriers at Occupy Wall Street rallies (Parents for Occupy Wall Street 2011). These images raise obvious questions about agency and coercion, which are very difficult to ascertain.

⁴ One of the clearest targets of this un-American bent is President Obama. There are numerous images and snippets of video available online of protestors at Tea Party rallies suggesting that the president was not born in the United States. A slogan seen on protest signs during the 2009 and 2010 rallies was “The zoo has an African lion, and we have a Lyin’ African” (Carcetti 2009). The slogan along with photos of a lion and President Obama appears on T-shirts and is being sold on numerous Web sites, including zazzle.com and cafepress.com, which allows members to design T-shirts that cafepress.com makes and distributes.

⁵ Burghart and Zeskind’s (2010) study links many of the leaders of major Tea Party groups to anti-immigrant groups like the Minuteman Project, as well as white nationalist and anti-Semitic groups. There are certainly many examples of racist and anti-immigrant messages and slogans on the signs and T-shirts of Tea Party protestors. However, the Tea Party movement’s shared platform coalesces around fiscal and tax policy and does not have a consistent message with regards to immigration or racial politics.

⁶ This image has become somewhat ubiquitous online, and it is difficult to ascertain its original source. CNN ran a story detailing the controversy by Ashley Fantz with the headline “Obama as Witch Doctor: Racist or Satirical?” In Fantz’s story, Tea Party Express organizer Joe Wierzbicki described the participants carrying the signs as a “few bad apples” (2009, ¶6).

⁷ In the movie V for Vendetta, a child wearing the mask is killed by police, which triggers at least one neighborhood to revolt against the fascist government.