Hello Tea Party…

Well it took me a day to put this email together. Well we had our first meeting since the April Tea Party and about 30 people came to the meeting. That was great. We discussed some new organizational initiatives that will begin to place the RockfordTeaParty in the community’s narrative with increasing degrees publicity.

We now have some new folks to add to the organizational mix Our New Media Coordinators Dale Spurlock, Robert Baxter, Dana Pelan. These three will be working to their levels of time and expertise to interact with the local and State media to make the RockfordTeaParty known.

We also have two Legislative Coordinators, Phil Parra and Jessica Henderson who will be working on our interactions with all of our elected officials.

Next we have a number of group coordinators Sharon Whitford, John and Jody Carlson, Russell Rauch, Jessica Henderson, and Sharon Kelly who will lead local groups in their neighborhoods and or amongst family and friends that will discuss the various issues that are important to folks in the Tea Party movement and that are important to We the People…Americans.

We also found two Tea Partiers to step up and be 20 Something Coordinators. Jonathan Cobb and Jacob Bradt who will not only be group coordinators but will also be responsible to reaching out to that difficult to reach group who soundly supported our new President in this new regime.

If you know any of these coordinators please talk to them about your ideas, get involved with their group.

We also have a few folks who are going to begin working on a community discussion series. Bruce Kincaid, Sue Brock and Joel Collinsworth will coordinate this series. It will be a series of informational meetings about the topics that are important to us all. These informational meetings will educate folks in ways that they just are not educated via the traditional process in the media and the educational system.

Once we had set up these coordinator positions we began discussing other organizational issues regarding the actual next Tea Party which will take place on July Fourth at Haskell Park in Downtown Rockford and then subsequently in the July 4th Parade. We plan to have a speaker for this Tea Party and one of the RockfordTeaParty members is working on bringing a speaker in. Bob Bellard stepped up to volunteer to look into it and thankfully he has some interesting connections which may help.

We also need to begin organizing people to build the Tea Party float for the Parade. I am asking you all here to send me an email if you can help. We also discussed music for the Tea Party this year. We plan to have  PA system to ensure adequate communication at this upcoming tea party. Our Coordinators will be helping to get the word out to many more people this time but this effort will not happen without you. As the day approaches we not only need the above volunteers but we need much much more. We need people to help pass out fliers and invite their friends and family.

We also discussed the introduction of the idea for the Tea Party Float. We also want to help with the July 4th Celebration by manning phones for their fund raiser for the 4th of July Committee and by conducting a food drive during the July 4th tea Party Event and the parade to give to the various food banks locally.

But now we have to shift gears into financials and we need to start seeking donations. I am asking all of you to consider donating to this Tea Party. You may not be able to offer your time and or effort because of your schedules or work, but I am asking you to send a donation to help defray the increasing costs of this organization. I work a regular job and have been paying for all of these things out of pocket and at the end of my ability to pay for things, and if we cannot pay for all the things we will need, then we may not be able to move forward.

We need to pay to rent the Tea Party location and PA system and here is a list of the other items we will need to pay for. Meeting Rooms for the next two meetings and then monthly thereafter. Speaker for this next event. Radio Commercials. Communication items such as posters that we plan to put up around town, fliers, one mailing, a billboard. And of course our Tea APrty float for the July 4th Parade.

While walking at the bike path thinking about the meeting I had a huge list of items and incidental items that will require financial support. So I am official asking for a donation which will not be tax deductible to this cause.  Depending on the response to this I will be opening a RockfordTeaParty Account at a local bank and thus I would like for all who anticipate being able to donate to make your checks out to RockfordTeaPArty. I am asking for each person to donate anything they can but a nice round 25 dollars would be helpful or more if you can afford to. If you decide to donate and send the check to the address at the bottom made out to RockfordTeaParty it will only be deposited if I can get enough people to contribute their financial help. If not I will either send it back or shred it. Believe it or not this is an investment. You may not see returns in your bank account, but it is an investment in our community, state and Nation. We must change America. We have no where else to go folks. We are here and this is our land. Our country. Our home. If we cannot make it better now, we never will and we may as well dig in for a decade of abuse. Possibly more.

At this point these donations are not tax deductible because we are not a 5013c organization and we may never be. For starters this would cost alot of money to become a 5013c group, but also in becoming a 5013c group we would be at the mercy of the IRS who could easily put the screws to us if they don’t like our message which brings me to the part of the Tea Party Meeting that I think we can all identify with.

Yes eventually we got past the discussions of organization and on to the topic of discussing the issues. The issues are what we are all in this for. The Tea Party has people who are in this because of Taxes yes, extreme government overreach yes. But we are also interested in the other issues that all Americans must suffer under. Please allow me a brief deviation and then a brief synopsis of this part of the meeting. We decided that we are an American Movement. We are definitely not democrats. Some of us are recovering Republicans. All of us don’t know who we are anymore within the traditional party alignment. The one thing we all agreed on was that we are Americans. We are Americans who are sick of being abused by our government. We are Americans who refuse to get used to being abused. Once we get used to being abused as Americans we may as well just throw in the towel and accept what we get.

In our meeting we discussed the tactics of Saul Alinski which have been used with maximum effectiveness against Americans by a certain segment of our population which includes the media and the current government and supporters of this current government. We discussed the desire for a true revolution at the polls in 2010. We discussed the fact that we as a Tea Party organization will only support those candidates that support Fair Taxation and limited government. We will be seeking to get statements in writing from candidates regarding their official support of these matters. But we will not just accept lip service from people like Chuck Jefferson, Dick Durbin and so on. We will look at their records and if their records don’t match their promises they will be called out on it and they will be opposed in the 2010 elections and subsequent 2012 elections.

Well this is getting long and so much more was discussed. It was exciting and fun and motivational. We had Kurt Kallenbach there who is making news with his Walk the Talk. Please do everything you can to support his effort which kicks off in about two-weeks. He spoke about his walk and about our Declaration of Independence which is a focus of his upcoming walk to Washington DC. How exciting to have such a patriot in our midst. Jonathan Cobb was also there who is the Leader of the local 9-12 Group and his support has been so valued. And Joel Collinsworth, the leader of the New Son’s of Liberty was there, a man I consider a real Patriot and an honor to work with in our effort to organize locally.

Ok so I want to go but I won’t. Please come to our next meeting. It will be a doosy. I will let you all know when it will happen and it will probably happen in the same location. Please consider contributing your financial support to this effort. You can send your checks to

RockfordTeaParty
708 Glendale Ave
Rockford, IL 61108

Thanks for reading. Lets wake America up. Get them to start caring. Help them to participate in the life of our nation.

David Hale
Director, RockfordTeaParty

PS: For all Coordinators please send me an email to the email address I gave you at the meeting. It will be our email means of communicating.