Frivolity Meets Politics

Anti-Tea Party Mob Storms Bozeman

By Allen M. Jones, 7-03-09

	It's all about the t-shirt

For my money, there are few sins so egregious as the taking of yourself too seriously. I mean, really, what’s the point? We’re all going to eventually kick the bucket with an equal amount of kicking and screaming. Might as well enjoy ourselves while we’re here. So I knew I’d met a kindred soul when I ran into Brian Leland yesterday morning in downtown Bozeman. A local master electrician, he’s also the founder and organizer of “The Green Coalition of Gay Loggers for Jesus,” a tongue-in-cheek, don’t-take-yourself-too-seriously counterpart to a Tea Party demonstration being held in Bozeman the morning of July 4.

The Tea Party, a conservative movement initially organized to protest “out of control spending at all levels of government,” will be marching on Bozeman’s Main Street at 10:30 am, closing the thoroughfare to vehicle traffic. The GCGLJ will be holding its own march an hour earlier.

Ironically, the Tea Party (given their position regarding government spending), will have the costs of their demonstration paid for by the city of Bozeman, by the same tax payers whom they would ostensibly like to champion. The GCGLJ, however, is footing their own bill, and more. Soliciting donations and selling T-shirts in order to support the demonstration. As a courtesy to local commerce, they’re also holding their march an hour earlier, avoiding further loss of vehicle access to Main Street.

Leland told me, “I feel it’s a patriotic duty to pay your own way. The Tea Party’s not paying for anything. We’re paying for the city to set up barricades and then, after the Tea Party, take them down, drive them back to city shops. At the end of the day, we’ll be paying for the majority of the costs of the Tea Party event as well. The city’s telling me that Bozeman will end up having to only pay about $400.”

Leland’s initial goal, prior to marching, was to raise $1,100. He has met his goal, and more, and will be donating the overspill to the Gallatin County Food Bank.

Daniel Person of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle wrote, “Organizers of the Tea Party – who have said they do not oppose Leland’s march – do contend that it would set a dangerous precedent to require protestors to pay for a demonstration, since it is a constitutionally protected right.”

Leland’s own position seems to be as much of a reaction against the city of Bozeman as it is to any stance taken by the Tea Party itself. Irked by what he sees as a lack of openness and procedural missteps on the part of the city of Bozeman (the permits for the Tea Party’s event were approved in a meeting that apparently wasn’t publicly noticed), he has written, “…the initiating spark for our event was the Bozeman City Commission’s complete disregard for the Montana Open Meeting Law. When faced with an angry, out-of-town mob looking for a government bailout, commissioners folded like a cheap suitcase and ignored the laws they swore an oath to uphold.”

Since organizing his group, Leland has faced a wide variety of reactions from the community at large, both approving and condemning. Some of the strongest reactions have come from those who don’t see anything at all funny in using Jesus’s name in this particular context. Leland has an answer to this as well: “As to the cries of indignation over the religious reference in our organization’s name, look at an aardvark or a duckbilled platypus and tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.