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Article I submitted for an on-line publication:

Dear Congress:

There’s been a lot of speculation about the people who attend the town hall meetings, tea parties, or who marched on Washington. We’ve been called right-wing fanatics, Nazis, and extremists by our own representatives and senators in an effort to brand us irrelevant. But, since none of those labels come close to who we really are, I’m going to tell you a little about myself and my neighborhood to give you a snapshot of the rabble rousers that are causing all this unwelcome commotion.

I work in the IT field and probably make better than average money. I live in a 60-year old house, a ranch in a nice neighborhood. Being older, the house really needs new siding, the existing siding is buckling and starting to crack. I got an estimate and, with the garage, it’s around $8,000. I can’t afford that right now so it will have to wait. I have another neighbor who needs a new window, hers is leaking. It’s around $1,500 dollars for the window and repairs and has to be paid in cash so that too will have to wait. I took a walk in my neighborhood the other day and noticed a new red door on one of my neighbor’s home, long overdue but nice.

That’s when it struck me that while we struggle to scrape together the cash for a new window or door, you guys sit up there on Capitol Hill and throw hundreds of billions of dollars around like it’s loose change, each of you eager to add another few billion for some pet project in your district that will help your image and political career. How much has your reckless, selfish, immoral spending cost us? How much could we have done for our families and homes with the subsidies you gave other people for their old cars much less the stimulus, bank bailout, auto bailout, and other pending blockbusters?

We’re the protestors, the people who need a new door or window, who want you to stop pushing us around, telling us what we can and can’t have, how much of our hard-earned money you’ll let us keep, and even what doctors you’ll allow us to see. The people who are trying desperately to be heard by a government that arrogantly and steadfastly refuses to listen.

We didn’t vote for a powerful leader when we elected you, we voted for a representative of the people back home in your district or state, not just those who can give you a plum committee chair or add millions to your war chest, but all of us. Yes, even the ones you don’t personally like or those of us who don’t agree with your ideals. You were elected to represent us, not to impose your will on us. I don’t know when I started worrying about what my government is doing to me instead of for me but sadly, that’s where we are.

So, who are we really, all these people who dare to show up at town hall meetings ostensibly being held for us to voice our concerns, who burn up your phone lines and fax lines with those annoying calls and emails, or who join the nationwide tea parties and marches with that irritating first amendment thing about “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Who are we? In the words of George Bailey:
“Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about... they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.” … It’s a Wonderful Life.

It’s us, Dear Congress, We the People