Tea Party Organizer: Effort "In A Very Disconcerting Position At The Moment"

One of the leading coordinators of the tea parties that happened across the country on tax day, April 15, has penned a soul-searching letter to supporters saying the tea party effort is "in a very disconcerting position at the moment."

Eric Odom, administrator of TaxDayTeaParty.com (the online hub of the tea party phenomenon), wrote on Monday that he is troubled that the parties have come to be seen, from both within and without, as a unified "movement" with central leaders trampling the prerogatives of the grassroots.

Odom writes that at the federal policy level, tea partiers should be focused on three things: opposing "Socialized Healthcare," "Internet Taxation," and "Union Card Check."

At the local level, those sympathetic to the tea party events should look to strengthening processes for ballot initiatives and referendums, term limits, and supporting tea-minded candidates for local offices.

READ ODOM'S LETTER:

OK, seriously... what's going on with the Tea Party effort?
And what should we all be thinking as we move forward?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi [Name],

If you're concerned about the direction of the Tea Party effort, it is VERY important that you take a few moments to read and digest this entire email.

I'm writing you because I find the Tea Party effort in a very disconcerting position at the moment. I've been on vacation for the past few days, so I'm a little behind on all the news, but from what I'm reading it sounds like there has been a lot of things said internally, within the effort, that probably should not have been said.

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For the record... I'm not writing you as a representative of any organization or coalition. I'm not writing you as director of this org or that org; Rather, I'm writing you as Eric Odom. Eric Odom the activist, the tea party organizer, and the concerned American.

I now recognize that I should have written to you about this sooner. I know that many of you are emailing me and calling my cell phone to try and figure out which "group" I am joining or which "coalition" I support, so I thought I would address that question, and follow it up with a full explanation of what I'm personally doing post April 15th.

To give you some quick background... I'm the guy who developed both the site and concept for the February 27th Chicago Tea Party as well as the April 15th Tax Day Tea Party. I'm not in any way suggesting this was all my idea, but I am asserting that I've been HEAVILY involved since minute one of everything that has happened in the movement to date.

This has given me a very unique and humble perspective on the Tea Party effort. Unique because I have numbers and data that no one else has. I mean, I know exactly how many visitors we had, what they were searching for, who contacted us, what they were asking, how many contacts we made, and how many media mentions we were privy to (among MANY other things). Humble because I'm the kind of guy who likes to sit behind the scenes and work to facilitate an environment where true grassroots activity can occur, which has provided a much different view of this movement as it unfolded as opposed to what many others have seen happen.

Since day one, I've strongly held the opinion that there should never be an "official" coalition or group to "oversee" the Tea Party effort. In fact, my belief is that doing so is impossible.

This caused problems between myself and a couple other national organizers because some of us shared vastly different opinions on how this movement should function.

Yes, we had a website. And yes, our website had sponsors (some of which, by the way, I was not very happy about), but I believe our sponsors did help us get an early nudge that we needed for mass attention, and in turn, mass collaboration.

But to me that should have been the end of it. In my view, our goal should have always been to simply facilitate an environment where local organizers could take the lead in this movement.

Sure, our website had difficulties... but that was a learning process for us and one we learned great lessons from. That said, we did everything possible to stay out of the way of local organizers. We didn't try and tell organizers what to do or say, we just tried to provide advice and help others share their experiences.

Essentially, our function as a website was solely to market local Tea Parties and help organizers collaborate. That was it!

Now I understand that some out there are saying "there is poor leadership involved within the group who originally started all of this", but to those folks I would remind them that I never wanted to be THE leader of this effort. Nor did I believe any of us at TaxDayTeaParty.com should try and become THE leader of this effort.

I constantly stated my desire to see all 800+ local organizers take a leadership role at the local level and begin developing local coalitions, taxpayer groups, lobby networks, citizen action groups, etc. It has been and always will be my opinion that a top down model fails every time in the modern day free-market movement.

So why on earth should we try and do it again?

And as a side note, we at some point need to understand the VITAL importance of regaining control of our LOCAL government. I get that fighting Federal battles is sexy and everyone is doing it, but I also get that we're losing our asses in our own back yards!

So I cringe when I see people claiming to be "leaders" in this movement make statements about the Federal government and how that is where all of our energy needs to be spent.

Here's a memo for you... the current administration as well as the current congress are doing a fantastic job of defeating themselves. Not to say we just ignore them, but if we devote all of our time to the Federal fight yet lose our states... we do so at our own peril.

I think this is why I have always gotten along so well with Stacy Mott of Smart Girl Politics and Ned Ryun over at American Majority. They get it. They're a part of a group of free-market movement folks who understand the value in fighting out-of-control government at the local level and how it in turn affects government at the federal level.

So, I think a part of what I'm trying to say here is that I never personally left the Tea Party Movement. In fact, I would suggest quite the opposite. I would, however, admit that I lost interest in being a part of a national "brand" that centers around planned protests in a top down format.

Also, I was never once a fan of trying to brand the free-market movement as the "Tea Party Movement." The DontGo Movement already learned a hard lesson from trying to do just that (http://dontgomovement.com). Last August we had a HUGE groundswell of action related to the energy debate, and through Twitter our campaign was branded "DontGo." The reason for that word is because our message is that we were paying extremely high gas prices and congress needed to stay in session to find a solution to the problem BEFORE going on vacation.

Just like with the Tea Party effort, many media outlets and political pundits put pen to paper claiming the "DontGo" campaign was officially a movement. This is what became the DontGo Movement.

The problem, however, is that there was an error in the way DontGo was viewed. DontGo was not a movement; Rather, it was a campaign within a movement. The real movement is much larger... the real movement is the nationwide free-market movement. DontGo shouldnt have been branded as a movement. Instead, it should have been branded as a national grassroots campaign within the movement.

I believe this should be the case for the Tea Party effort as well. The movement already existed, we just needed to be called into action. The Tea Party effort is not the movement... the Tea Party effort is a campaign we launched within the movement.

So what are we up to now?

I'm currently working with a coalition of folks that have opted to take a quieter, more strategic approach to the energy surrounding the Tea Party effort. We're developing a two pronged plan for long term political activity within the free-market movement, and I want to invite you to be a part of this effort.

1) Federal
At the Federal level, we believe we're looking at three very significant fights coming up that our coalitions and networks should be heavily involved in. It is our opinion that these are fights that we can not only play a major role in, but we think we can actually influence the outcome.

--Socialized Healthcare
--Internet Taxation
--Union Card Check
(and a few other free-market related issues as well)

2) Local/State
Our goals at the local level are as follows (not limited to):
--Revitalize and strengthen the initiative & referandum process
--Heavily support and push through Term Limit legislation
--Identify candiates for school board, city council, county boards, state legislatures and state constitutional offices... and arm them with the tools and knowledge needed to succeed at running for office
--Develop a large scale fifty state network of independently operated grassroots networks/coalitions that can effectively combat extreme local taxation
--Identify potential leaders and groups within the movement and provide them with the tools needed to expand and become politically successful

3) Long term planning for a large scale 50 state Capital protest on tax day of 2010

We hope to kick this effort off on June 1st, 2009, and we would love to have you as a part of the team.

Consider this a special invitation to a private, national strategic planning conference call that will take place on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009. In order to accept the invitation, you MUST send an email to [e-mail] and tell me why you desire to be a part of this conference call.

We'll reply with call credentials once we've reviewed your response and approve you as a participant (sorry for the long process... trying to block those who simply wish to disrupt what we're doing).

In the meantime, in regards to the Tea Party effort... keep doing what you do. We need lots more of it and I think we'll get it. But let's not lose focus on the bigger picture, and let's make sure we're thinking about the entire movement as we head into an important 2010 election cycle.

We the People have the power to take back our country. We need to get back on track and do the work that needs to be done to fix this broken system.

Best Regards,
-Eric Odom

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Comments

[Wordstosay]

I too am confused about the tea party. I too do not like taxes but will tolerate taxes if I could see the positive benefits from its collection.

A tea party historically is not the positive image I want to represent this nation. European upset with the price of tea and decided to act out by misrepresenting the native of this Continent and act like idiots throwing expenses bundle of tea over board hoping that Great Britain will come and kill off the natives for fouling up the bay area with expenses bundle of tea.

What I saw was angry European American and Latino with case issues and two African American female with bonded issues.
The tea party was created to express the hatred of a dark skinned human that is now representing this nation.
The tea party will go down in history as an assault against the nation progress toward perfection.

[confidance government]

Dammit,
As a libertarian I am pissed off that the Republican Party wanted to hijack this. From my perspective, this Odom guy is misinformed and doesn't understand the message that needs to be distributed:

1) No more deficit spending; raise the goddamn taxes to pay for the programs or ax the programs. If people saw how much these things actually cost when we don't mortgage the nation's future, it might alter their idea of what is neccessary spending.

2) No more government intervention in the economy. It was deficit spending coupled with the government's desire to increase homeownership rates that landed our economy in this mess, more state interference is not going to fix it and will only prolong recovery. Politicians are not financial experts and have no nothing about business except how to scapegoat or shake it down. Let Gm go bust, let the banks go bust, these are the negative consequences that will keep other businesses from repeating the same mistakes.

3) Only little people pay taxes, either via deflation or direct taxation. As we are currently involved in deficit spending, the only possible consequence is deflation which is a tax on all earners, including those earning under 250,000. Billionaires and millionaires can leave the country taking capital with them or employ their wealth to hire tax eperts to exploit the code to their advantage. Raising taxes on them does ZERO to increase government revenues, so why are we trying to either impoverish or expel the entrepreneur class?

[elfish]

The idea that the government caused the financial crisis by encouraging home ownership for low income people is ludicrous. The whole thing came from deregulation and the lack of regulation in the first place. The concept of packaging mortgages came from big business who begged congress to deregulated the industry. Fannie and Freddie were deregulated because they had to compete with private industry once private industry was deregulated. But Fannie and Freddie only cost us $75-billion. It was completely unregulated credit default swaps that have cost us $3-trillion and they were unregulated to begin with. How would less regulation have save the $3-trillion?
Although I favor many Libertarian ideas, a pure libertarian approach simply cedes all power to big corporations. Think about it. If the government stay completely out of the economy, the power of the money of big corporations will simply dominate everything. That is what has happened for the past 30 years and it is the source of our current financial crisis.
The Republicans love Libertarian ideals when it comes to big corporations, but they hate it when it comes to social issues. But that is where it makes the most sense.

[confidance government]

Why not bankruptcy then? Did the bailouts help?

[Chip W]

After the recent financial system debacle, I'd think the free-market worshipers would take a look at what it is they're worshiping.

Free market is swell, but like everything else, it has advantages and disadvantages and limitations. Why must the free-market worshipers turn a blind eye to this?

Because that's not how faith-based belief works. At least that's what I come up with.

[confidance government]

It works better than the other alternatives, thats why we keep coming back.
If you can float an economic system that lifts more people, quicker and faster out of poverty or has contributed more to the advancement of scientic knowledge and the arts, we will shut up.
By the way the origins of this crisis are in the manipulation of the free markets, the federal housing authority wished to increase the number of homeowners in the USA and thus pressured banks to give mortgatges to previously unqualified lenders. When these lenders started defaulting it started the ball rolling.
It could have been stopped by one word, "bankruptcy." Thats right, we take these institutions that took these risks and failed, hack them up, and pay off their creditors under existing laws and regulations. the reason this is dragging out is that business is no longer sure what the rules are. Will their contracts be enforced in court? Is their CEO's obligation to the shareholders first or to the state?
Right now we have fascism, private enterprise is privately owned but state controlled. So the debate should be over "A failure of Fascism"

[Chip W]

You misread. Free market is fine, I don't suggest replacing it. But it has limitations; it's not the panacea that the worshipers keep claiming it is.
Banks pressured by the fed into making bad mortgages: I looked into what I think you're referring to. As far as I got, this wasn't true, despite lots of claims to the contrary. Banks weren't pressured to alter their loan terms. The more recent providing mortgages to people who couldn't repay them was free-market run amok, and could have been reduced with more government regulation, not less. A problem here was that lenders passed the risk along. People acting in their own self-interest ended up doing harm to the market. An oversight body was needed with one role being to prevent individuals form doing harm to the market.

[Mrphd2b]

Grand Old Perpetrators
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

[jjgg5]

A joke is a joke, is a joke. Truly laughable. The Republicans seem to need to review everything in retrospect to discern anything. This is not a good. No?

[rich misty]

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/02/steele-moderates-gop/

How do Republicans make and drink their tea?

1) Dump teabags into river polluted with agricultural runoff, industrial waste, and raw sewage
2) Drink the river water

[MagicalPossibilities]

That was a very eloquent letter. The problem is, 99% of the tea baggers won't understand all the big words...

[rich misty]

Yup

[dreffein]

What blows my mind is that these peoples' taxes will be lower with the Obama plan. Why weren't they protesting when they were paying the higher Bush rates? Or doubling the deficit during the Bush years? Or lying the country into war?

What a bunch of sheep.

[retromega]

I understand two of Odem desires.

#1 he wants the insurance industry to run healthcare. I assume he is really healthy and only responsible for and to himself.

#2 He is opposed to his neighbors banding together at work so they may bargain as a unit with the companies that employ them. From being employed by a company and having owned a company employing others, I find this usually comes down to issues of simple fairness.

But the third burning issue of our time Internet taxation! What is that! And Why is it so bad?

I also wonder what tea bags have to do with this manifesto!

Odem, you must have been blind, deaf, and, especially, dumb if you thought your efforts had even a remote connection to what the Tea parties or tea baggers or whatever was about.

What I saw and heard was a lot of self professed victims bemoaning the fact that they were not yet richer than everyone else. They weren't rich because poor people had to have money too and took theirs. Most poor people are refered to by clearing your throat first, and saying "ah, Mexicans or "ah, blacks". Most tea partiers, even those in wool coats and suits, just got a tax break.

Odem, publish your list before you accept money from "sponsors". It works like this: when they pay for you THEY OWN YOU! I'm surprised you didn't know that!

retromega

[BigAl72]

I'm sure they had fun while it lasted. But did they ever realize that they were tea bagging for all the wrong reasons?

[AFAN]

Well looks like another movement has been shot down!

[STG 44]

President Barack "Teleprompter" Obama and Timothy "TurboTax" Geithner.

[nolibhere]

It's funny how 0 b @m@ put these poeple down. He thinks, they should support him because he's b l@c k....

[GalaxieGal]

How, exactly, did President Obama put them down? Has he even commented on this "movement"?

[tiredofthesameoldstuff]

He talked about people waving bags of teas in a dismissive fashion. His only mention of them.

[StillIRise]

President Obama has never put down the people who participated in the Tea Parties, nor has he ever expressed, implied or otherwise demonstrated that he thinks the American people should support him because he's black. But you probably already know this!

Based on your comments, I thought I would offer some suggestions for a replacement of your username. Instead of nolibhere, why not use:

notruthhere ...
nofactshere ...
norealityhere ...
nohopehere ...

Any of these would be a lot more appropriate to your level of discourse.

[rsprags]

He commented about people walking around with tea bags on their head but not willing to be truthful and discuss the real issues. He stated that he would be willing to debate them anytime on the issues but he implied there was no patience for rhetoric and innuendo.

[slowtono]

Obviously it worked!!! Lots of news, lots of hate singing by the left, lots of follow up, lots of it's FOX's fault. It is great. What it said was hey folks we don't agree and we live here too. Hey leftie as you sit in the high seat now we will march about asking you the questions. Where's the money going? wheres the troop support? Where's the support for Christian ethics that supported civil liberties, educated and clothed the poor, the immigrant, the lost and the addict. Hey lefty where's the job's? You want money? Where am I going to earn it from?

[Jeff1958]

You could have asked those same questions during the 8 years of the Dubya (mis)admin­istration.

[Marnie1]

I am still confused as to exactly what image this FOX promoted hate fest was supposed to project.

The visual is of of tiny tea bags, very un-awe inspiring, and from that prissy pants tea party effetes at garden parties sipping tea from china cups. Eitherthat or XXX porn films for the family values party.

But that doesn't jibe with the hate mongering,, Joe 12 pack, we want American to fail because we hate the N..., who was elected by the American people, who showed up at the rallies.

The RepoTaliban are so confused about who and what they are they can't even get their hate messages and their visuals coordinated.

[the964kid]

I'm surprised anybody would take credit for this embarrassment...

[Mabila]

LOL!!! Exactly