Tea Party Protests Stimulus At Georgia Capitol

ATLANTA -- "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore," shouted some of the 250 or so protestors who took to the steps of Georgia's State Capitol Friday.

Despite a monsoon style downpour, the crowd came to protest President Obama's federal stimulus plan that's spending billions of taxpayer dollars.

"Who's here because they're angry?" WGKA Radio's Joel Aaron asked the crowd, who roared a huge reply.

The tea party protest, patterned after the Boston Tea Party of 1773, was organized over just the past few days here and in about a dozen other U.S. cities.

Sponsored by mostly conservative groups, the campaign was inspired by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli's recent on-air outburst that the stimulus plan rewards bad behavior and mortgages the country's future.

"Will government get us back to prosperity or will the people of this country put us back into prosperity?" Aaron asked the crowd.

Several of Georgia's Republican state lawmakers attended and spoke at the rally.

But most of the crowd was made up of families, like Michael and Brandi Naragon of Covington. They brought their three young sons out in the downpour.

"I'm a history teacher," Michael Naragon told 11 Alive News, "and it's one of the things I'm trying to stress to my kids is that their government should be working for them and I think that what we've got right now is not doing that."

"I just feel like my childrens' future has been sold," said his wife, Brandi, "and they've had no say in it."

At the end of the noon rally, the crowd lined up to throw hundreds of tea bags into a large bucket.

They plan to send them to the Capitol in Washington, D.C. to show Congress how upset they are with the record-breaking spending plan.

Organizers of the Atlanta rally got a demonstration permit for a crowd of 50 and were pleasantly surprised to see five times that many show up in the drenching rain.