July 4th Tea Party

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Premo Mondone on June 21, 2009 at 6:35pm

Well, I got a reply. Not sure what to make of it. It was forwarded by Bryan Haddock, who I think was assisting Mark West in organizing the last Tea Party. However, this email is from a Darrell Hoover. I'm not sure who he is, but I'm going to give him a call in a short while and see if I can find out what's going on. Sounds as if he only has one speaker thus far, so not sure how many other people even know about this, etc. Here is the email I received. Anyone know who this guy is?
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I am organizing the Chattanooga Event on July 4th. It will be at the Tennessee Aquarium (Downtown Chattanooga) 12:00PM EST. If you have anyone to speak, or a tent set-up, that would be great! I have one speaker committed to come, (Ben Brandon). I have also alerted every media outlet in the area as well. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Any questions or comments, please contact me. Thanks again!

Darrell Hoover
(423)290-9800 - Cell
dhoover2112@gmail.com

Once I talk to this guy, I'll post more info here.

Permalink Reply by Premo Mondone on June 22, 2009 at 5:06pm

I emailed Darrell Hoover and asked if I could call him tonight and talk voice and he said that was fine. I'll call him tonight and try to get the scoop on what's going on, then post what I find out here.

Permalink Reply by Premo Mondone on June 22, 2009 at 7:13pm

Ok....here's the scoop. I got emails from Mark West and Bryan Haddock who helped organized the last Tea Party and they said they weren't having a Tea Party on the 4th, but were planning one later. They simply felt that too many people would be doing stuff with their families and that the turnout for an event on the 4th wouldn't be as much as they wanted, etc.

I then called Darrell Hoover, the guy who is trying to organize the event for the 4th. There WILL be an event on July 4th at 12:00 Noon, in front of the Aquarium in Chattanooga. We talked for quite awhile and he seems to think that the turnout will be "huge". I'm not sure that I agree with "huge", but it still could be significant and would give us a good opportunity to promote the FairTax.

He says that he's already contacted all the media and that he checked and there was no need for a permit or anything. He has some speakers scheduled. I said that we'd be happy to help in any way that we could, if he'd just let us know what we could do. He was pretty vague, but said he welcomed the help and that thus far he's done almost everything on his own with no help at all, although he says he's just now getting offers to help.

I started to get a bad feeling as to how much he's actually done and gotten lined up. I asked if he had a sound system lined up for the event and he said yes, that he had that taken care of. Then he said, well I have some guys who say they'll try to have a sound system available. I said, well you know Darrell, you can't let people get away with that sort of thing. Even though you're asking for their help, you MUST get firm commitments from people and let them know that you are COUNTING on them.

I asked him that I didn't know of anywhere to get a sound system, but that perhaps someone in our group MIGHT know of where we could borrow one for the day. So, I'm asking if anyone has a contact with perhaps a church or some other organization where we could get our hands on a sound system to use at the Tea Party. Anybody know of anyone?

I told him I'd try to get him an answer within the next 2-3 days. So, I'm going to ask Miki to email everyone on her list to ask them and also ask them to sign-up here if they haven't already.

He said that would be a great help. I then asked about having one of us speak at the event and he said "Well, we're gonna start at noon and it's just gonna be sort of "free flowing" and we'll see where it takes us". I wasn't real happy with that answer and wanted to "shake him through the phone" and let him know that you can't run an event like this, like that.

Sooooooooooo.................bottom line. I've got no idea if we'll get to speak or not, but it still might be worth our time to put up our tent and try to get the word about the FairTax out. Give out some materials and try to add numbers to our organization. We need warm bodies and this might be a way to get some, regardless of how well run this event is or whether or not we get a chance to speak or not.

If we're able to find him a sound system, we might be able to say simply, well, it's our sound system and we'd like to have a few minutes to speak to the crowd, that would be ok, woudln't it?

Hehehe..........anyway. What do you guys think? Anybody know where we can borrow a small sound system?

Permalink Reply by Jim Tomasik on June 23, 2009 at 12:18pm

Keep up the effort. if fifty people show up, that is fifty people to show that you were orinized enough to hold up your part.

I hope you all can join in and do what you can to "save the day".

Permalink Reply by Larry Stewart on June 23, 2009 at 6:06pm

Way to go Premo - I say we give it a shot. I can probably get there about 11:30, and bring / set up the tent/tables and banner. I'm happy to man the tent, and (only if Premo is unable to attend) willing to speak for as long as they'll give us. - Keep me posted. Larry

Permalink Reply by Premo Mondone on June 26, 2009 at 9:05am

Ok.........got some good news. Tommy Crangle has got a PA System that he says he can bring to the Tea Party that we can use. I just sent the following email to Darrell. You'll notice that I'm trying to steer him a bit and find out more about the event. He's never said how long the event would be and thus far has only told me about one speaker. That makes me a bit nervous, so I'm trying to get more info out of him and make sure that he's trying to build a decent "program" for the event. Below is my email.

==========================================

One of my people came through and has a PA System that we can use at the Tea Party. It hadn't been used in awhile, so he got it out and he tested it and said it works fine. I'm not sure how big it is, but it's got to be better than trying to yell out to the crowd with no amplification at all. He says that he will definately bring it to the event.

I'm having people ask me about more details on the event. I know it begins at 12 Noon, but how long is it scheduled to last? Two hours? Three hours? Personally, I'm thinking either 2 or 3 hours should be about right, depending on how many people that you have to speak. I mean, you can't just have people standing around chit-chatting the entire time. You've got to present some sort of organzied "program".

Have you come up with a tentative schedule of events, and/or a speaker lineup yet? Have you assigned everyone a time slot? How long is each speaker or organization going to speak? Five minutes, ten minutes?

Do you have room on the schedule for someone from our group, most likely myself, to speak about the FairTax? If so, for how long and in what time slot? I think I can get Tommy Crangle, running for Congress (Zach Wamp's seat) to speak. If you want me to ask him, just let me know. He understands that it would need to be "non-partisan", simply about basic concepts of "fiscal responsibility", "lower taxes", "state sovereignty", "responsive government", etc. We don't want anyone, from either political party to essentially make a "campaign" speech. Just stick to the issues and reasons that we're holding the Tea Party in the first place.

Get back to me a.s.a.p. with answer on the above questions and let me know what I or SERFTC can do to help. We will definately be there with a tent, banner, table, etc. If you have a tentative schedule, email it to me and I'll see if I can think of anyone else that we can get to speak. Like I said, we've got to have enough activity to keep everyone "entertained" for however long the party is scheduled to last.

Premo Mondone
SouthEast Regional FairTax Coalition (SERFTC)
http://fairtaxchatt.com/

Permalink Reply by Premo Mondone on June 26, 2009 at 10:08am

More info.........Here is Darrell's reply and my response to it.
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As far as speakers go, I have one committed at, or around noon, (Ben Brandon - County Executive / County Commission Chairman at Dade County Georgia). The others are free to get up afterwards. I really do not have this whole thing on a scheduled time-line as of yet. I have been alone in this for a month, and just recently, have I gotten a lot of help. Any help with this event would be greatly appreciated. The only reason I agreed to organize this, is because there was nothing for Chattanooga scheduled for the 4th on the national site. Had I realized that the "Chattanooga TEA Party" group was aware of July 4th, but didn't want to participate, I would have left it alone. I never meant to overstep their group. I didn't even know they existed until a week ago. The PA is great news. Thank you, and any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again!

D. Hoover

My Response:

I think I understand. Do you want me to coordinate the speakers? If so, I can take that off your shoulders if you want. We've got to have some sort of "schedule" to go by or we're gonna look really disorganized.

If you would, just send me Ben Brandon's contact info and I'll get with him and try to pin him down to some sort of "time limit". Once I do that, I'll start trying to line-up some other speakers. If you don't do that, things just get out of hand and you have people rambling on and on, which will lose the audience pretty quickly. If anyone asks about speaking at the event, just refer them to me and I'll get them on the schedule. Feel free to give them my email address and my business phone number. Tell them to leave a voice mail and I'll call them back a.s.a.p. Please don't give anyone my home or cell number if you've still got them. I spend a lot of time on the phone each day for work, and I hate to be bothered at home, etc.

At this point, I think that since we have so few speakers scheduled at this moment, we should tell people that the event will be from 12:00 Noon until 2:00pm. I'm just hoping that I can round up enough people to speak, to make the two hours go smoothly. At this point, we don't have enough to get us through an hour, but I'll see what I can do to fix that.

Just let me know what you think of my plan and if you approve, I'll get to work on it immediately.

Premo Mondone
SouthEast Regional FairTax Coalition (SERFTC)
http://fairtaxchatt.com

Permalink Reply by M. Dion on June 26, 2009 at 12:07pm

Thanks for the update, Premo. Should we add the TEA Party as an FTN SERFTC event so we can send invitations? If you guys want to send them, I'll collect email addresses of family/friends/nodding acquaintances and then set up a combined "contacts" list to send mass invitation from FTN. This could help get the word out as well as not wear people out with emails from all and sundry. And I promise not to ever use the list unless instructed by SERFTC to do so.

I plan to be at the Chattanooga TEA Party and will be happy to help either man the booth/petition or whatever else you guys need done.

Permalink Reply by Premo Mondone on June 26, 2009 at 12:41pm

That sounds like a good idea Miki. I would say go ahead and do it. Even if Darrell doesn't want me to coordinate the speakers, it looks like we're going to have a good presence at this event.

Permalink Reply by FairTaxChatt on June 26, 2009 at 12:41pm

Hey Premo, this may help explain some of the confusion around the July 4th event. This is a message sent to the Facebook group from Bryan Haddock. It sounds like there is quite a squabble in Tea Party land...

Bryan Haddock sent a message to the members of July 4th Event-Chattanooga "Take Back America" Rally

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Subject: Tea Party Confusion...

You're receiving this message because you responded to the Tea Party announcement from the Chattanooga Tea Party Group.

I wanted to clear up some confusion before it gets out of hand.

As one of the organizers of the Chattanooga Tea Party organization, I've expressed some concern over what I've interpreted as a "forced" 4th of July "tea party."

My concern, as well as others involved in organizing the Chattanooga Tea Party, is that having a quickly planned "protest" on a day that many people have already made plans with family, etc., will do more to hurt our credibility than to help it.

Our suggestion has been that we wait until we have a well established group that will be able to responsibly plan and implement an effective protest event. (we're currently looking at September 12th)

Because of my position on this (again, along with the rest of the Tea Party organizers), I have been threatened by one of the organizers of this event. I have been told that I am going to be "exposed" as an enemy of the Tea Party.

Although I hate getting wrapped up in pithy squabbles such as this, I'm concerned for the well-being of the Tea Party organization, so I wanted to stop this garbage before it continues any further. Those of you who know me are probably laughing at this accusation, but for those of you who don't know me, I assure you that this is nothing but garbage.

For those of you who wish to attend the event at Ross's Landing on the 4th of July, I wish you the best of luck. I want to make you aware that this is NOT a Chattanooga Tea Party event... and WHY it's NOT a Chattanooga Tea Party event.

It's not because we're not interested in continuing, it's because we're not interested in putting together a hasty protest. After the turnout at the Tax Day Tea Party (around 3,000 attendees), if we put together an event that only draws a couple hundred, the media will discredit us and tear us apart.

We can't risk losing face... and we feel that establishing a long-lasting organization is the first step in accomplishing long-term change in our nation.

I apologize for this unprofessional behavior and I hope that you all will look for good things to come from the Chattanooga Tea Party in the near future.

-Bryan
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Permalink Reply by Premo Mondone on June 26, 2009 at 12:49pm

Regardless of Darrell's decision on the speaker situation, we need to begin thinking about what we want to have available to pass out at the event.

Everyone bring whatever they have, from left over stock, but I'm thinking that we need to have one piece of literature that we can have PLENTY of on hand to give out. Something not specific to the Tea Party, but perhaps a single page of basic info with our SERFTC Logo (perhaps the one with the map) at the top, along with the website address and a contact email (perhaps Miki's), since she is the "keeper of the email list". It would be natural to feed any potential new recruits her way.

Anybody already have something that we could use or modify slightly that would work? If you can get me the text, I can take it and the logo, come up with a rough draft and if everyone likes it, I'll take it and get it printed or copied, depending on whether or not we want the logo to be in color, etc.

Question is.........how many should I have printed up? 500? 1,000? More? If we have too many, it's not a major problem, if it's not even specific and we can use it anytime and always have them at our meetings or any future events, etc.

Any ideas or suggestions on this?

Permalink Reply by Premo Mondone on June 26, 2009 at 12:59pm

I figured it had to be something like that, but for the life of me, I can't understand why neither Mark or Bryan would admit that there was any sort of problem. I asked both of them in emails, if there was some sort of problem or politics going on and they said no, only citing their reasons for not wanting to hold the event. Both of these guys in fact, sent me Darrell's information and told me to contact him about the July 4th Event.

Darrell says that he didn't know about the other Tea Party group until just recently, AFTER he'd decided to try and do this, as he couldn't believe that no one in Chattanooga wanted to have an event on the 4th.

I guess it's possible that he didn't know, but it does seem odd that he could not know about the original group.

Are jumping the gun here? I honestly don't care who's "behind the event", unless it was a Neo_Nazi group. Other than something along those lines, I'm thinking if there is only a crowd of a few hundred, I don't think that's an embarrassment and shouldn't affect the attendance at the event in September. I wish them luck and if I can help in any way at that event, I will and I think we should as a group.

Am I way off base? Or do you guys see it the same way?

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