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Tea Party Patriots’ numbers top 3,000Tue, 06/30/2009 - 4:03pm
By: Ben Nelms
“In three months we’ve gotten our membership up over 3,000. We’re absolutely not going away.” That is the stance of Peachtree City Tea Party Patriots organizer Cindy Fallon who, along with a growing group of Fayette and Coweta residents, will be holding a July 4 event at the Frederick Brown Jr. Amphitheater in Peachtree City. The gathering will feature radio talk show host Herman Cain, Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, local business owner Marty Harbin and Theo Scott as Thomas Paine. The event will run from 4-5:30 p.m. Jim Richter, an officer with the grassroots, non-partisan, non-profit Peachtree City Tea Party Patriots, said the purpose of the July 4 rally is simple. “Our July 4 event is really to bring an awareness to the changes in our nation,” Richter said. “We want to put a stop to the direction we are going. We need to get back to the fundamentals of our Constitution, to bring awareness to that issue and put a halt to the runaway spending that’s going to destroy our country. And with the change of speakers, with Herman Cain coming, we think we’ll be able to fill the amphitheater.” Back in April while Cindy Fallon organized the April 15 tea party rally in Peachtree City, Chip Coursey, Wendy Bloedt and Judy Whitwood in Coweta organized the Newnan Tea Party and the trip to the April 15 rally at the state Capitol. Between Fayette and Coweta, the efforts of a handful of people who did not know each other has grown and combined into one effort, Richter said. “Three months ago there were four of us with a total contact list of 20 people. We’ve been able to grow in that short period of time to a contact list of 3,200 people, with groups from other counties now having come in,” Richter said of the recent inclusion of residents from Henry and Clayton counties who opted to join the growing Fayette/Coweta movement. “Our stated goal is to grow the group to a contact list of 10,000 and that sure seems achievable. Look how quickly it has evolved to 3,200. And by the inclusion of all the other counties we believe that 10,000 is achievable within the year.” A few miles to the west of Peachtree City, Sharpsburg resident Wendy Bloedt in previous weeks merged her efforts with those of the Fayette group. Yet for organization members, there is no distinction between county lines. The only distinction lies in whether the status quo of Washington will continue to exist in a manner that undermines the Constitution, group members have said repeatedly. “Ever since I organized the buses for the April 15 Atlanta Tea Party rally and worked to put on the Newnan rally, I had been dealing with Cindy Fallon over here in Peachtree City, corresponding back and forth,” Bloedt said. “We stayed in constant contact and we both realized that we both had the same goals, we had the same issues. We thought it would be better for Coweta and Fayette if we joined forces and joined our databases so that each county is not re-inventing the wheel and so that we are working together to represent south metro counties. Sometimes south metro gets a little omitted from the Atlanta region.” Another aspect of the Peachtree City Tea Party Patriots is the ongoing development of a political action committee (PAC). “Tea Party Patriots are not ‘bipartisan,’ they are non-partisan,” organization member Kathy Valencia explained. “Participants are made up of Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Independents and those now disenchanted by all political affiliations. Just as Samuel Adams argued in 1773 that the Tea Party was not the act of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option the people had to defend their rights, today’s Patriots see their growing grassroots organization as a principled and necessary movement designed to protect the freedoms that have been enjoyed by Americans to date and to protest further erosions of Constitutional rights. The Patriots today are rallying support for the upcoming battles by forming a PAC.” Some of the PAC goals include promoting candidates at local levels, organizing respectful protests where needed, educating residents, defeating candidates who vote for pork spending, enacting state and national laws to end pork spending, halting government intervention in financial markets, business and the healthcare industry, ending legislation that favors special interests, using the power of the pocketbook to require fairness in media reporting and, as a long-term goal, to require term limits for politicians. Commenting on the rapid evolution of the local group, Bloedt said the organization is expecting to continue to grow and to expand its database and the list of volunteers. “It’s time for people to realize they need to work, and to work together. Every person that is sitting at home and is frustrated with what they are seeing in the news every day and is concerned about the future of their country needs to take responsibility,” she said. “This organization is constantly growing and it’s happening so fast with a lot of people who were dissatisfied. They want to be involved and they want to be informed and our goal is more than putting on tea parties. We are not going away. We wouldn’t be going through all this work if we were going to have a couple of tea parties and go away. We have an end goal. It’s getting our country back. So this organization is not just about rallies. It’s about educating and informing people about the issues that are coming up in the news everyday. In the same way April 15 was not the beginning and the end, the same is true with the July 4 event. We already have other local events scheduled into September.” Speaking June 25 after the organization’s weekly meeting, Cindy Fallon said the efforts of the past 12 weeks have already paid off. Those efforts, she said, will not be dissuaded. “I think this is really hitting a nerve with people; hard-working people that care about their country, that care about their kids, who pay their taxes and try to be good citizens. They are being penalized with more taxes and more spending and more big government. We’re penalizing people for working hard,” Fallon said. “In three months we’ve gotten our membership up over 3,000. We’re absolutely not going away.” The Frederick Brown Jr. Amphitheater holds a maximum of 2,500 people. The gates will be closed when that number is reached. The Peachtree City event is expected be attended by residents from across the area since it will be the only large event held July 4. For more information on the local organization visit www.ptcteapartypatriots.org. login to post comments
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