The following editorial appeared in our local newspaper on September 2:

Tea Party tour won't fix what ails health care
OUR VIEW: Monday's rally in Flagstaff appeared to be more about TV ratings driven by controversy than mobilizing supporters around a solution. Wednesday, September 02, 2009 At their most basic, rallies are a chance to let off steam.But whether they drive a meaningful public agenda or distract us from it depends on your point of view. Rallies, of course, come in many shades.There are pep rallies to get students excited about an upcoming football game.There are campaign rallies aimed at firing up supporters on behalf of a candidate.And then there are protest rallies designed to tell elected officials that their constituents are upset with their programs and policies.The last takes on symbolic value depending on the turnout. Attract enough people to your protest and the news media take notice, thus amplifying your message far beyond the reach of your bullhorn.A generation ago, mass protests were centered on civil rights, the Vietnam War and the environment. The Baby Boom generation was coming of political age, and when politics-as-usual didn't get the results they wanted, they took to the streets.Since then, grassroots political activism has added many more tools beyond rallies, including neighborhood organizing, mass-mail fundraising and social networking. Getting everyday citizens involved in the political process is as much about marketing as about educating them, making it difficult to determine who is acting on genuine sentiment when making a campaign contribution or planting a candidate's sign on the lawn.But the gold standard in political organizing still remains how many people you can convince to get off the couch, turn off the TV and attend a rally in person. Critics of Obama's reform platform have seized on that truism through their "tea party" metaphor: The colonists took matters into their own hands, even if it was just the dumping of a couple hundred pounds of taxed tea into Boston Harbor.Monday's tea party rally in Flagstaff turned out about 1,000 people, but it appeared to raise as many questions about this protest movement as it answered.-- For starters, the event was part of a national tour, not locally organized.-- Its timing and staging during the evening hours appeared to be calibrated toward receiving prime time coverage on sympathetic cable network talk shows. As anyone who watched the Fox Cable Network Monday night could see, the protests seemed more scripted than spontaneous.-- The message, when it did come through the slogans, lacked the coherence of an "Out, Now" or "End Racial Discrimination" or "Stop Air Pollution." Do the protesters not want the federal government involved in health care at all, or do they just want the feds to run Medicare and Medicaid better? If the latter, how?At base, we are worried that such rallies seem like wasted opportunities to advance the cause of civic literacy among people who are clearly engaged with issues and their political context. There has been no line drawn in the sand yet with health care reform as there was with the Vietnam War or the Civil Rights Act. It remains fluid and subject to negotiation. A rally strategy that takes a dogmatic approach to something as complex as national health care reform ill-serves that process while failing to motivate participants to get involved in the hard work of finding solutions.That hard work is ongoing in Congress, and our representative, Ann Kirkpatrick, is in the thick of it. After a false start in Holbrook several weeks ago that saw constituents frustrated by a one-on-one meeting format in a supermarket, she has agreed to hold a town hall forum Thursday night in the high school auditorium. Rallies and the enthusiasm they generate have their place, but not at deliberative forums designed primarily for information-sharing and constructive dialogue. Protesters who have already made up their minds can take their yelling outside for the TV crews and the passing cars. The rest of us have hard work to do.

Below is my response, which was printed on September 13:

To the editor:
First off, with or without media coverage, folks who are attending the Tea Parties are there because they share grave concerns and beliefs. Folks there on the 31st were from all parties, and the common theme was we are tired of the government trying to run our lives and do our thinking for us; we are appalled at the extremes the government is going to in order to get their way. We have come together in Flagstaff three times this year, and each time our numbers grow. And we will continue to fight against the insanity of putting our nation further and further in debt to enact these bills that are designed to wrest control from the voter and force them into programs that they are against. As for assertions that we have no alternative plan to the plans that are currently being pushed by the libs, we have repeatedly pushed for tort reform to enable doctors to care for patients without having to order tests simply to protect them from liability issues.As to fostering competition in the Insurance industry, why not open up the barriers between states to allow people who are looking for coverage to compare all available coverage?Those changes could go a long way to increase coverage and reduce the cost of health care without risking the chaotic changes that could come about as a result of the current bills being considered.