Matt Kibbe is president and chief community organizer of Free the People, and a senior editor at CRTV. He is the author of Don’t Hurt People and Don’t Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto.

As someone who was intimately involved in supporting Tea Party activists in 2009, I feel like I’ve entered Bizarro World.

A re-energized wave of liberal activists is crashing down across the nation. Democrats are celebrating disruptive protesters at congressional town hall forums, lauding them as living exemplars of the best traditions of American participatory democracy—flesh-and-blood versions of Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom of Speech” painting. “Everywhere, people are marching, protesting, tweeting, [and] speaking out,” cheered Hillary Clinton in a new video released by the Democratic National Committee. “Let resistance plus persistence equal progress.”


For many Republicans, their new roles in this episode are equally upside down. Members of Congress are skipping out on public events, afraid of catching the wrath of angry voters. Several GOP elected officials have alleged that the protesters are not actual constituents, but outside agitators paid by wealthy liberals—people to be ignored, not engaged with. President Donald Trump himself questioned the legitimacy of “so-called angry crowds,” tweeting that they are “planned out by liberal activists.” Marco Rubio, who first won election to the U.S. Senate in the Tea Party wave of 2010, has defended his own decision to avoid such town halls, arguing that attendees will “heckle and scream at me in front of cameras.”

What a difference eight years makes.

Back in 2009, it was impossible to find a single Democratic apparatchik willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of citizen participation in congressional town halls. Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas dismissed frustrated voters as a “mob … part of a coordinated, nationwide effort.” Then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi described Tea Party protesters not as grass-roots Americans, but as artificial “Astroturf.” After a glut of protests at town hall events in August 2009, she even went so far as to co-author a USA Today op-ed in which she smeared the demonstrators’ tactics as “un-American.” Organizing for America, Barack Obama’s campaign machine-turned-advocacy group, outrageously labeled Tea Party members “right-wing domestic terrorists who are subverting the American democratic process.”

Improbable as it seems, the hysterical reactions from the left about robust citizen participation in the democratic process in 2009 almost make Trump’s tweets circa 2017 seem downright reasonable. As Jerry Seinfeld once described it: “Up is down, and down is up.”

In 2009, I served as the head of FreedomWorks, where I helped to support and organize Tea Party activists. I know something about town-hall protesters. And I have some tough news for both parties. The Tea Party was real, not “astroturf,” we were not a “mob,” and we were certainly not “domestic terrorists.”

Likewise, the Women’s March in January and the current flood of town-hall protests are equally real, and should not be dismissed or diminished. Citizens exercising their power—as long as they don’t hurt people or infringe on others’ rights—is always a positive thing. Indeed, it’s one of the primary tools Americans have to hold the government accountable.

If it looks like chaos, I call it beautiful chaos. We are in the middle of a political paradigm shift that is giving access to knowledge and power back to end users. Citizens have more say today, and social media and other technologies make it easier to educate others about the issues and organize.

Welcome to the new normal in American politics.

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Today’s progressive town-hall protesters follow in a tradition of disrupting the old top-down status quo—one that stretches back across the political spectrum, ranging from Howard Dean to Ron Paul to the Tea Party, and yes, even Donald Trump.

That said, there are some important differences between Tea Party and today’s activists, and I think these distinctions will ultimately undermine the ability of today’s protests to evolve into a social movement with real electoral consequences.

First, this movement feels strictly partisan, and many of the groups supporting the protesters have strictly partisan goals. Indivisible, the group bootstrapping a training manual on town hall disruption based on Tea Party tactics, is helmed by Democratic operatives. Several of the authors are, in fact, former staffers of Doggett. Likewise, the Center for American Progress, the Service Employees International Union, and Organizing for Action (President Obama’s community-organizing operation formerly known as Organizing for America) are all involved, often with paid community organizers on the ground.

At FreedomWorks, we provided much of the same type of support: training, organizing, and providing logistical backing. Although we were savaged at the time as “Astroturf,” these were—and are—legitimate functions. But there is an important difference between advancing partisan political goals and advocating an ideological agenda.

Though my friends on the left may not realize this, they ignore it at their own peril: The Tea Party wasn’t a partisan movement, especially in 2009 and 2010. Critics of the Tea Party forget (or ignore) the origins of our frustrations. At the massive Taxpayer March on Washington on September 12, 2009, every single activist I spoke with cited President George W. Bush’s Wall Street bailout as their primary motive for getting involved. They would recite back to me his infamous rationale: “I abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.” That’s what got folks off the couch and organizing. We were ideologues in 2009, and our shared philosophy bound us as a movement.

We targeted Republicans and Democrats with equal zeal, because, as our battle cry made clear at the time, “we had to beat the Republicans before we could beat the Democrats.” By contrast, today’s protesters seem to be strictly targeting Republican town halls instead of making Democratic members of Congress feel the heat, too.

Second, it’s hard to find a focused, unifying set of issues or principles that connect today’s Democratic protesters. Most seem motivated solely by Donald Trump’s victory in November. But being anti-Trump is not enough: Even if they wanted to, Republicans in Congress can’t really do anything about this. Are the disruptions today about the electoral process? Russia? Immigration? Health care? LGBT rights? One of the myriad other issues that seem to be drawing activists out? I can’t tell. They will need to find unified principles and a cause.

The Tea Party, almost to a person, was unified on the principles of “individual freedom, fiscal responsibility, and constitutionally limited government.” Our policy agenda flowed from that: opposition to bailouts, deficit spending and government control of health care.

Third, if protesters want their cause to reach independents and disaffected Republicans (there are likely plenty), they had better keep it civil and respectful. Tea Partyers certainly got rowdy at the 2009 town halls, but they also came prepared, many having read and shared the contents of the health-care legislation that Pelosi had posted online. Surprising as it may be to some on the left, at FreedomWorks’ gatherings of Tea Party organizers, we were assigning readings about Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, and other successful nonviolent social movements. Violence can kill your cause, and we did our best to police our own community. Fair or not, today’s protesters will own the worst behavior associated with their efforts.

Just shouting down members of Congress—or in the case of one recent town hall in Louisiana, booing both the Pledge of Allegiance and the chaplain offering an opening prayer— won’t play well with anyone you need to win over. Not all protesters are the same and most are real people with real frustrations, but all protesters will be tarred by the actions of the worst among the group. Try to show a little respect, and it will be more effective.

Republicans are making a big mistake if they dismiss or ignore this movement. Contra the political mythology, the Tea Party was far more independent than Republican, and that translated into a broader coalition when coupled with the existing GOP vote. Today, the same battle rages for the hearts and minds of independents and Republicans uneasy with Trump’s rhetoric.

So, a little advice to Republican elected officials: Don’t avoid town halls. In fact, schedule more of them, like Representative Justin Amash has done. Listen. Hear your constituents. Defend your positions. Don’t abandon the promises you made to voters in the election. If needed, provide for security at the event so that all citizens feel safe. Set up a system where everyone gets a chance to speak and to hear your response. Answer democratic engagement with more democratic engagement.

I realize how difficult this all may be in practice, but I agree with former Democratic Representative Gabby Giffords: “Have some courage. Face your constituents. Hold town halls.” Democrats failed that test in 2009 and 2010. Republicans run the risk of making the same mistake in 2017.