Tea Party attendees show their support It was estimated that hundreds of people attended last Wednesday's two Tea Parties on the John T. Myers Bridge in Lafayette. Party organizers said the event was designed to bring likeminded people together to spur them to action.

"If you leave and do nothing else," organizer Donn Brown told the crowd before the first batch of tea bags were tossed over the bridge rail into the Wabash River, "this is worthless."

Brown called the event "a revolution of knowledge and action." He urged participants to attend governmental meetings, such as a school board, county council, city council and commissioners meeting. He instructed them to make their opinions known.

"It's time to get off our butts and do something," he continued. "We are all responsible for the crap that is going on in this country. They have us right where they want us…dumb and lazy."

"Quit asking your government to do for you and do for yourself," Brown instructed. "I want government, but I only want a little bit."

Brown said the tea party was "only the beginning" and shouted, "We've had it!" which received applause from the crowd.

Putting a stop to government overspending, paying more for less and ceasing the practice of earmarks were familiar themes throughout the event. Brown said that Congress received the more than $7 trillion stimulus package at midnight one day and voted on it the next morning. He alleged it was not read by most of those who approved it.

"The stimulus bill was signed without being read. 'Trillion' is the new 'billion' and 'million' is chump change," Brown told the crowd from the speakers' platform. "Delay is preferable to error. Dissent is the purest form of patriotism," he quoted Thomas Jefferson.

Brown invited attendees to join his group, the C.I.A. (an acronym for Citizens In Action) to further the message of the symbolic throwing of the tea into the water as a protest.

Contact information for representatives, both state and national, was distributed. Telephone numbers and E-mail addresses for everyone from President Barack Obama to both Lafayette and West Lafayette City Council members were included.