A Time For Tea: A Tea Party Time Line

It would take a book or three to provide a comprehensive documentation of every aspect of the origins of the Tea Party movement. There are so many different entities involved, so many individuals and organizations with widely varying agendas that it can be hard to fully comprehend. However, there are a core group of organizers who provided much of the inspiration for and support to the movement in its earliest days. This is a comprehensive chronicle of how the modern-day Tea Parties came about, from whence they came and what came of them.

2007

Oct 11

• Blogger Eric Odom organizes what he calls the Conservative Leadership Conference (CLC). Speakers include several future players in the Tea Party movement, including former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey of FreedomWorks, Former Congressman J.D. Hayworth of Citizens United, Erick Erickson of RedState.org, "Blue Collar Muse" blogger Ken Marrero, Chris Simcox of the Minuteman Project, Paul Jacob of Sam Adams Alliance and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Immediately after the conference, Odom is hired as New Media Director by Sam Adams Alliance.

Oct 13

• The CLC holds a straw poll. The winner is Congressman Ron Paul.

Dec 16

• On the 234th anniversary of the real Boston Tea Party, Paul's presidential campaign supporters hold the first modern Tea Party, re-enact ing the Boston Tea Party by dumping tea into Boston Harbor. The event, one of Paul's so-called "money bombs," raises 6 million dollars in one day.

2008

Aug 3

• ChicagoTeaParty.com is registered by Zack Christenson, a producer for right-wing talk show host Milt Rosenberg on WGN Radio, Chicago.

Oct 10

• Odom is a panelist at the Defending the American Dream Summit, organized by Americans for Prosperity.

2009

Jan ?

• The Libertarian Party of Illinois creates a Meetup group and Facebook group to discuss the Tea Party concept and how to best promote it. The original organizers include Dave Brady, Mike Folgelsanger, Chris Jenner, Josh Hanson and John Kramer. According to LP-IL Public Relations Director Kent McMillen, Eric Odom is also involved in these initial discussions.

Jan 5

• Eric Odom leaves Sam Adams Alliance, according to Wikipedia. The Sunshine Review, a sort of conservative Wikipedia created by Sam Adams Alliance, claims Odom worked with SAA throughout 2008.

Jan 6

• LP-IP's Yahoo group first discusses a Chicago Tea Party.

Jan 8

• LP-IP's Chris Jenner ponders soliciting aid and support for the Tea Party concept from organisations like Sam Adams Alliance and Illinois Policy Institute.

Jan 25

• Keli Carender (Liberty Belle) starts her blog, Redistributing Knowledge.

Jan 26

• Carender posts on her blog the suggestion to "choose a day" to protest, so that "like-minded people" will be able to find each other.

Jan 30

• Sam Adams Alliance announces that Eric Odom will be taking over the organization's network of conservative bloggers, Blogivists.com. The blog post mentions that Odom "continues to work closely with SAA as a consultant on many of our endeavors."
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Comments

[ComradeChris]

09:09 AM on 04/22/2010

Nice article and timeline. Was omission of any of the End the Fed events by design? While End the Fed is not the same as the Tea Party, the goals of both movements are centered around less government, and there's a fair amount of overlap between the movements. End the Fed was moving down the track before the Tea Party was conceived (depending on your definition of conception). We had about 350 come to the End the Fed Rally in Chicago Nov 22, 2008, another nice crowd last year, and have big plans for 2010.

[Alex Brant-Zawadzki]

12:33 AM on 04/26/2010

The focus of the article had to be somewhat limited, and certain issues were left out or not described in full. It's not the only timeline out there so I focused mostly on issues about which I've written in the past.

I helped organize a health care rally this summer. We had 3,000 people turn out. We received approximately no press coverage. I hope your End the Fed Rally fares better.

[kfreed]

03:52 PM on 04/21/2010

Terrific article... and yes, it would be possible to produce volumes on this issue, but then there's that uniquely American problem of short attention spans. If it were up to me, you'd be next in line for a Pulitzer.

[Gail Zawacki]

06:25 PM on 04/19/2010

Ha ha, maybe we are related!

Gail Zawacki,

www.witsendnj.blogspot.com

[boutthemdawgs]

05:09 PM on 04/19/2010

since when is spector a dem from va? geez. if you got that wrong, how tight is the rest of your data?

[Alex Brant-Zawadzki]

10:12 PM on 04/19/2010

You're right, switching one P for a V really throws every single other piece of the thousands of words of actual research into question.

[kfreed]

03:37 PM on 04/21/2010

So its, what, your job to spot a typo and turn it into a conspiracy? Specter (of Pennsylvania - that's a PA) switched from the Republican Party to the Democrats... presumably because the R's have lost their tea bagging minds.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22087.html

[darcdante]

01:55 PM on 04/16/2010

Wow, thanks for putting that together, Alex. That's a really thorough timeline. The first I'd heard about it all was with Beck's 09/12 project. It's interesting to see how it all started prior to that. I'm still not sure what kind of impact the tea parties will have.

[Alex Brant-Zawadzki]

03:08 PM on 04/16/2010

It's fairly thorough. It focuses more on some aspects of the group and leaves out some of the key players of the actual grassroots component of the movement. But the hypocrites and egomaniacs are so much more FUN...