Katrina Berning
Published: April 15, 2009

DUBUQUE- In 1773, American colonists boarded ships of the East India Trading Company and threw tea in the Boston Harbor to protest the tea tax imposed by Britain.

Today, a group of activists echoed that idea as they took a stand with a Tax Day Tea Party of their own.

Hundreds of people listened to speeches and waved signs in Washington Park, located right across from the Dubuque Federal Building. Organizer Jeff Luecke said the location was intentional.

“We’re hoping that as people drop their taxes off at the post office, they’ll see things and realize how much money the government is taking from them,” he explained.

Luecke was joined by people who said they had “had enough” with the government’s excessive spending. One of them was Dubuque resident Maggie Curry.

“We got audited twice in the last year for different years – 2005 and 2006- within months of each other. They hadn’t finished the first one when they started the second one,” Curry explained.

Curry deemed the audits unfair and unnecessary.

“You pay your taxes; you do the right thing; and they still jump on you,” she declared.

Lisa Walton, of Dubuque, echoed Curry’s concerns.

“I think people in Des Moines and in Washington have forgotten who they work for and I think they’re power-mad. They need to listen to us. We don’t spend money we don’t have in our house. The government shouldn’t be spending money they don’t have,” Walton said.

These two women are not alone. Their complaints are shared across the nation.

“This is one of literally thousands of tea parties going on across America today. This is a national campaign and I think there are enough people waking up across the country that just aren’t going to take it anymore,” Luecke said.

Luecke criticized the past Bush administration and the current Obama administration, declaring that his protest is a bi-partisan issue.

“We want change that we as taxpayers can truly believe in. We heard a lot about hope and change in the campaigns. What we’re seeing now is not right. It’s not left versus right, conservative versus liberal. It’s right versus wrong.”