For Immediate Release: Sat., July 18, 2009
Contact: Nigel Coleman 434-549-2853
Bobby Conner 434-334-9494

Activists refused chance to ask question or display signs
opposing trillion-dollar government takeover of health care

Danville TEA Party leaders thrown off property at Perriello
town hall event, then tailed by unmarked police car

BLAIRS, Va. – Danville TEA Party leaders Nigel Coleman and Bobby Conner Saturday attended a local town hall meeting featuring two presidential cabinet members and hosted by Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Va., where they were refused an opportunity to ask the congressman a question and were then told by a plainclothes policeman to leave the property after they attempted to hold up signs urging Perriello to vote against a government takeover of healthcare. The TEA Party activists peacefully complied, but say an unmarked police car then followed them to a local restaurant where an officer left his vehicle, walked over to their cars, and phoned in their license plate numbers.

The event was held on a privately-owned farm in Blairs, Va. and featured Perriello, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, and Energy Secretary Tom Vilsack, all of whom talked about creating “green” jobs and the recent Cap and Trade bill.

“First, I was disappointed that Congressman Perriello refused to take hard questions from his constituents about where he stands on Nancy Pelosi’s trillion-dollar socialized medicine scheme,” Coleman said. “But I was outraged by the intimidation tactics we then experienced after merely attempting to ask him a question and, after being denied that chance, tryng to hold up some signs urging him to vote against a government takeover of America’s health care system.”

“This is another reason taxpayers are angry at our federal government, their treating citizens who are simply exercising our Constitutional free speech rights as if we’re terrorists,” Coleman said.

Conner said, “We have the right as Americans — without suffering intimidation tactics by police — to personally ask our congressman why he voted for the Cap and Trade energy tax increase that he admits he never read, and whether he’ll vote for the trillion-dollar Obama-Pelosi healthcare bill.”

Coleman and Connor are the Danville TEA party organizers who organized two recent TEA party rallies, one on July 4th and another on July 17th at Perriello’s Danville office to protest the upcoming socialized healthcare bill.

Coleman said that TEA Party activists this summer will pressure Periello to vote against government-controlled healthcare “over the phone, by mail, at his district offices, or on his front doorstep, if necessary, starting right now.”

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Is Perriello’s office private property being used as public property? Who’s paying the rent on this office? Taxpayers? Does that mean the property is actually under public use, though technically privately owned? Or is the property technically publicly owned? Research will likely show that this property was seized through eminent domain for public use before 1973-74. Due Process allows the government to seize and sell private property. Eminent domain allows property to be seized for a public use. If this eminent domain property was sold to the private sector, the sale may be illegal and the current owner in possession of stolen property, regardless of what a judge or police officer may think.