Hot barbecue sandwiches, potato chips, Southern sweet tea, vintage American Flags, lawn chairs, kids playing with their dogs in the open field, music, and green grass. Sounds like just another picnic day in Alabama. Add some clever protest signs and some great radio personalities speaking and you’ve got the start of a revolution!

Last week I attended Birmingham’s conservative Tea Party protest. It took place at Veterans Park next door to Spain Park High School in Hoover. Being a Libertarian leaning Conservative myself, I had been looking forward to this for a few weeks ever since I found out about the Tax Day tea parties on a few conservative web sites like TCOT (Top Conservatives on Twitter) and some of the radio talk shows like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

I got there right as the sun was starting to set over the rolling hills of the Spain Park area and already there were at least 300 people chilling out, setting out blankets on the lawn, and setting up booths with food, patriotic t-shirts, literature and information about the Fair Tax, the Constitution, and fact sheets about the current administration’s backward policies.

Up-link vans from ABC 33/40, WZZK, and WAPI were set up and a satellite up-link truck for Fox News had set up, ready to simulcast on the Sean Hannity show on Fox News later on that night. Dogs were chasing Frisbees and people were crowding in to get a front row spot.

The action started about 30 minutes later with Matt Murphy of 101.1 FM The Source and a few other local personalities. They spoke their minds about some of the hot topics like the government bailout and taxation. There was some great music in between and we saw a lot of creative signs.

At about 7:30 p.m., nationally syndicated talk show personalities Rick and Bubba arrived on stage and entertained and informed for a few minutes while we were waiting for the Sean Hannity show to do the simulcast. During this time more and m0re people had continued arriving. According to law enforcement reports, Hwy 119 was backed up all the way to Hwy 280 with people trying to get in and park and it didn’t stop until about 8 p.m. When the big on-air moment came, everyone “went nuts” as Rick and Bubba would say, flags waving and people chanting “USA, USA!”. Overall the unofficial headcount from the event coordinators was somewhere in the 3,000 range with more than 4,000 coming and going making our tea party one of the largest out of the over 800 parties held in the nation last night.

What I came away with from that night was, that THIS was the first step that a citizen can take to let your voice be heard. The tea parties are a completely non-partisan rally. It wasn’t about Obama hatred (although I’m sure the sentiment was there), it was about the common man having a voice and letting Washington hear that voice. I was also impressed that the conservatives were finally embracing social media using platforms like Twitter and Facebook to organize the event. The Birmingham party was almost completely organized grass roots with a Facebook page and word of mouth and throughout the country real time details were posted on Twitter.

The common person these days has no idea what they can do, if anything. I think that the tea parties has shown people that they CAN make a difference. Start little, do something big! Let’s keep our government accountable for their actions.

Photos: Josh Self/Flickr 

Josh Self is a contributor to The Terminal. He also maintains two blogs – a personal one, The Horse, and The Wedding Photogblog.