The national media, naturally, yawned, but the impact is real. And it’s still going on, with another event planned for this weekend.
St. Louis Tea Party leader Bill Hennessy described the first day of the “BUYcott” on the group’s Facebook page.
A gentlman (my age) in the salon (husband?) asked who we were with. I told him “St. Louis Tea Party.”
“Tea party?” he said. “You bad boys,” and chuckled. Then he looked at me, very serious. He said, “The tea party came up here to do this?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “we don’t want to see Ferguson go south.”
He laughed. And he looked at me. Then he was quiet, lost in thought for a minute. When he came out of it, he was like our best friend. Laughing, giving us crap about stuff, telling stories. He admitted baseball can be like “watching grass grow.”
In that moment of reflection, I’m sure he was trying to reconcile “tea party” with what he was seeing–four white people, ages 18 to 50, laughing, spending money, empathizing.
That moment made the whole event worthwhile.
In other shops, we’d get hard stares when we walked in and shopped. Once we told them “we’re with the tea party, and we’re here to shop,” these people actually shouted. “Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.” …
This wasn’t a big win in breadth, but it was monumental in depth.
