Locals to join march on Capitol

This time, the sign-wavers also are carrying second mortgages, holding down middle-class jobs and tuning in to Rush Limbaugh rather than Buffalo Springfield.

Their rallying cry, “Slow government spending,” doesn’t carry the same ring as, say, “Stop the war.” Still, Lynn Mitchell is inspired.

“In my lifetime I have never seen the American people this engaged in their government or what their government is doing,” said Lynn Mitchell, of Augusta County, a longtime Republican activist.

Mitchell is helping to organize a Sept. 12 trip to Washington to protest government spending, a spin-off of the tea party gatherings held earlier this year. Mitchell said some 200 Shenandoah Valley people are expected to travel to the Capitol.

Five buses have been lined up to pick up the protesters starting in Staunton and ending in Strasburg, according to Suzanne Curran, of Shenandoah County, another organizer of the area contingent. Curran said it is possible a sixth bus will be needed.

“The sleeping giant is going to Washington on Sept. 12,” Mitchell said.

The march is being organized by the FreedomWorks Foundation, a conservative group led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Backers of the march are hoping thousands will converge on Washington.

Galvanizing people to rally against the swelling federal deficit will be more formidable than the anti-war protests of the 1960s and 1970s, University of Wisconsin history professor Jeremi Suri said, because the focus was a narrower one that involved dislike of a president such as Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson.

The solution was also to get out of the war. The answer is not as simple now.

“It is not just a question of who is the adversary, it is who is responsible for the bad policy,” said Suri, who is the author of the 2003 book “Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente.”

Finding a specific culprit is difficult, Suri said, when the finger can be pointed at President Barack Obama, Congress, lobbyists and others tied to the federal deficit.

It is also not clear what changes could happen, Suri said. “It is easier when there is a consensus on what people want done differently. What do people want in place of that? I haven’t heard that yet,” he said.

Curran offered an answer, somewhat: The hope, she said, “that everything come[s] to a screeching halt in Congress and that the elected representatives take time to digest what they have been told.”

Whatever the message, Suri said, people being interested in their government is not a bad thing.

“I am an optimist about protests,” he said. “What could come out of this is a resuscitation of fiscal conservatism.”

Government spending isn’t the only issue, Mitchell said. Health care reform, which has stirred fiery town halls all summer, also will be a target.

“People feel like they are not being heard,” she said, adding that the Sept. 12 crowd will include more than conservatives and Republicans.

“There will be independents, Republicans, Democrats and high school and college kids,” she said. “A lot of retired people are going.”

Curran said older people fear that the country they have lived in is no more while younger people are saying “I want to live my life in the country like my parents did.”

Thus far, the big names expected to speak at the event include Armey and actor Stephen Baldwin.

Curran said they hope to remind Congress what being a representative means.

“People are speaking out,” she said, “because no one is speaking for them.”