On a weekend day with a beautiful break in the dreary weather, the St. Louis Tea Party celebrated its one-year anniversary. At 1:30 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 27, roughly 800 men, women, and children gathered on the steps of the St. Louis Arch to show their support for the Tea Party movement.
The St. Louis Tea Party, inspired by the Tea Party movement across America, was created Feb. 22, 2009, when Bill Hennessy and Dana Loesch agreed to set up a rally in St. Louis at the same time the Nationwide Chicago Tea Party was being held in American cities on Feb. 27, 2009.

The St. Louis Tea Party is, like the Tea Party movement, focused on fiscal conservatism: in protest of government deficit spending, such as the 2008 bailouts and the 2009 stimulus package. As they say on their website, “We believe in small government and dealing with the consequences of your own bad decisions. We utterly reject the notion that the most productive and responsible members of society owe a government-mandated handout to the less productive and irresponsible.”
As the celebration Saturday began, the Star-Spangled Banner and Pledge of Allegiance mingled with city noises and the MC, John Burns, shouted through the megaphone, “A year ago we began a war on tyranny.”
Following the introduction and a few warm-ups for the crowd, many speakers, including Michelle Moore, Stephanie Rubach, Jay Stewart, Jim Hoft, Gina Loudon, Dana Loesch, and Bill Hennessy, stood at the center of attention. They all shared some variant of insight on the current political standings in the United States.
Jay Stewart, an African American conservative, had a one-liner that stood out over some of the other political campaign promotions.
“Americans who are successful are the enemies,” Stewart said.
Jim Hoft runs a website called “The Gateway Pundit,” a nickname he commonly goes by. He had bold words for the audience that proved to excite them to the point of a U.S.A. chant.
“We’re not going to back down and we’re not going to be silent,” Hoft said. “We will not allow our country to be redesigned, or transformed, or destroyed by these radicals.”
Later, when Bill Hennessy spoke, the crowd was once again stirred to a fervor when he referenced the Health Care Summit that took place the Thursday before.
“Thank you for proving America still cares about its future,” Hennessy said. “In a smart, maniacal way, Barack Obama showed us every way our government is wrong.”
Although those who spoke to the crowd were the power that carried the rally on for an hour, the crowd was equally important, hooting, hollering, and cheering.
The signs and flags people carried included messages like “liberty not tyranny,” “talk is cheap except when Congress does it,” and “Obamunism: hand outs you can believe in.” One truck drove past the Tea Party back-and-forth that read, “How’s that Hope and Change working for you…” for over an hour.
One supporter at the Tea Party, Jim, was there to spread his message in addition to listen to the messages of the speakers. He carried a poster saying, “Reduce Military Spending by 50%.”
“I’d like people to think about what I’m saying,” Jim said. “I’m just trying to contribute to this movement in my own small way.”
Another supporter, Craig Niehaus, who was at both last year’s movement at the Arch and Kiener Plaza, gave a word of advice to the younger generation.
“The younger generation will be the people who will be paying for a lot of this; in a few years, they’ll be getting jobs and who knows what their social security costs will be,” Niehaus said. “Hey guys, look at each other, face the facts, and feel like you have to make some changes right now.”
Remarkably, there were many different opinions about the number of people at the rally. As Jim Hoft had warned in his speech, there was some distortion in the media.
“These selfish radicals may lie about the numbers here today, they may lie about the numbers we had back in April, and they may lie about the hundreds of thousands who marched in Washington, D.C., last year,” Hoft said.
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported 500 at the rally while The Gateway Pundit reported 1,500. Both of course had reason to distort the numbers and to no surprise, KMOX reported 1,000 supporters at the rally, exactly in the middle of the Democratic and Republican reports. While it seemed there were close to 800 people, John Burns, the MC, said he thought there were about 2,000 throughout the hour.
Burns said that once students go to college, only one type of thinking is allowed. He said the majority of students think alike, the majority of professors think alike, and if students are not part of the mainstream thinking, peer pressure will try to force people to believe it.
“Students need to have a commitment to intellectual honesty and to research all sides, especially the people who are outside the main stream, especially the people who aren’t considered to be right,” Burns said. “Listen to them because there’s a chance they could really be right and the supposed majority is wrong.”