The Illinois Tea Party

By By Wendy Cole, Elisabeth Salemme

Would you like milk or sugar with your tea? Or how about lower electricity bills? Disgusted with their utility companies' plans to hike electricity rates as much as 55% in 2007, Illinoisans are throwing their version of the Boston Tea Party, sending tea bags with their bill payments as a sign of protest. Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn, a legendary showman who has few official duties and plenty of time to think up such stunts, says thousands of tea bags have been sent to ComEd and Ameren, the state's largest utilities, since the protest began on Sept. 18. (It's set to continue until November to compel legislators to pass a rate freeze.) After online billpayers griped that they couldn't participate, Quinn posted a virtual tea bag on his website--and 1,500 were e-mailed to the utilities on the first day. "I believe in direct citizen action," he says. "That's the only way to move powerful bureaucracies and corporations." And lots of tea.