NPR's news blog The Two-Way picks up on The Associated Press' coverage of last night's Mid-South Tea Party meeting in Bartlett in which Occupy Memphis activists addressed and debated their counterparts on the right. As the AP report said, the two groups seemed to find common ground on some issues.
"It sounds to me that y'all ought to be joining us," said Jerry Rains, a 64-year-old computer programmer and tea party member. "You have a lot of the same goals we have, which is to take our country back."
By way of introducing a poll question -- "Do you think the Occupy and Tea Party movements have more in common than most people think?" -- NPR blogger Mark Memmott writes:
Reaching at least some consensus is notable given the suspicions before the meeting. The Mid-South Tea Party's website, for example, prominently displays side-by-side photos of Tea Party and Occupy rallies that note the many American flags at one (the Tea Partiers') and absence of them at the other.
Other differences include:
- When a tea party rally is over, the area is MUCH CLEANER than it was BEFORE the rally.
- Tea party rallies don't involve public defecation, urination, copulation, masturbation, assaults, destruction of property, sexual abuse, or arrests.
- Tea party rallies speak out in favor of restoring liberty as part of the solution, whereas OWS rallies speak out in favor of increasing tyranny as most of the solution.