Toby Marie Walker is a Tea Party organizer from Waco, Texas. She says, “Our representatives have forgotten who they represent, what the Constitution says, and that WE are THEIR boss. We surround them, we put them in office and together we can send them home.”
This is the twelfth in our series of e-interviews with local Tax Day Tea Party organizers. (There are links to the previous eleven interviews at the end of this post.)
How do you approach organizing?
Don’t underestimate the power of a ticked off tax payer. It only takes one person to stand up, after that many will stand with you. Organize your local tea party just like you would if you were to start a business. Don’t try to do it all yourself, delegate. Find people who want to help and put them in positions that best highlights their interests and skill sets. Keep a spread sheet of contacts, media, participants, volunteers, etc… Keep a journal, write everything down. Be prepared to answer WHY you are doing this and how you believe it will help (a mission statement and a vision statement are great flyer material). Don’t get sidetracked with other issues, stay on task with taxes. Keep your group as non-partisan as possible, there are problems in congress on both sides of the aisle. Lastly, have fun and hang on for the ride!
So, Toby, how long have you been a community organizer?
I’ve always been politically aware and have voted, but never have organized something like this. I have organized trade shows and am finding out it’s not much different!
What would you point to as particular challenges?
The hard part is making sure you do everything right legally (permits, insurance, etc…). We just started telling people what we were doing, why we were doing it and how we thought it would make a difference. A lot of what we are doing is trial and error, if we make a mistake we treat it as a learning experience and move on. The hard part is finding time to do everything! Most of us have jobs or are very busy with our “real lives” full time, so the little things in life are on a temporary hold, and sometimes dinner is skipped.
What do you see as being at stake in the Tea Party movement?
Our country’s future, our economic future and the legacy we will leave generations to come. America is a great country, and we can accomplish much more as a grass roots movement if we stand up together. Our representatives have forgotten who they represent, what the Constitution says, and that WE are THEIR boss. We surround them, we put them in office and together we can send them home. The National Tax Day Tea Parties are showing our government that the silent majority woke up, I believe we have the power to change the course of actions Congress is taking.
How do you let people know about your event?
Word of mouth is the best advertising, and with the technology we have today it is becoming much easier. We started with emailing, then a web site, then a newsletter, twitter, facebook, and on and on… We also printed flyers, sent flyers in a PDF to everyone so they could print them and take them to work, school, church, social groups, and area businesses. The local AM radio show host (Lewis Garret, Newstalk 1230 in Waco, Texas) has been a tremendous help. They put our website up on their website (front page) and have mentioned the Tax Day Tea Party repeatedly. We have plans for a YouTube video for future events.
Interviews with other organizers:
Tea Party people- Obama has NOT raised your taxes!!! What are you so mad about? And where were you when Bush was spending like crazy???? I guess that was okay. Toby does not help your cause, she just repeats the same stupid lines every time they interview her on the news. Yawn!
This should be called Patriots day as our forefathers fought for
no taxes to be used for frivolous ideals. Let our voices be heard
sick of taxes and tax money used to give to people who don’t
even pay taxes. “take from the rich to give to the poor??”
I DONT THINK SO!!:
Sore losers and crybabies!! Go ahead and show the country what a bunch of petulant children do when they don’t get their way. Unbelievable. More Sarah Palin! Please!!!
I’ve noticed a new trend emerging, I think it started with the Taxday Boston Tea Party people as a symbol of their commitment to take back control of our government.
They are giving the all seeing eye on the back of the one dollar bill a black eye with a black marker, or they are cutting out the eye with a hole punch. I hope this doesn’t upset anybody.
http://hosting02.imagecross.com/image-hosting-08/7981Black-eye.jpg
It is apparent that our government has no clue!!!! With all our technology why do we send more than 2 representatives from each state to Washington? We all have computers , cell phones, we are the people they are just the representatives right. Lets cut them down to size every other company has taken cuts Right? In 1977 President Carter started a new body of government called the dept. of energy (why) to reduce our dependence on foreign oil!!!! ha what a laugh, now this year their budget is 42.5 billion dollars. Who gets this money???? How long do we sit around and barely make ends meet before we kick their rears out of office and give the government back to the people where it belongs?