| Dear ATP Members,
The Tea Party movement won many victories this year. Here are the most recent:
- November 2016 Elections
- Three Tea Party issues were prominent in the 2016 election - Obamacare, immigration, and voter fraud.
- Rep. Paul Gosar (AZ) won his primary, then re-election with Tea Party support
- American hero Brian Mast was elected to Congress from Florida with Tea Party backing
- Constitutional conservative Josh Hawley was elected Missouri Attorney General after a Tea Party education campaign exposing the liberal voting record of his opponent in the Republican primary
Alexandria Tea Party ended 2016 with 552 people on the mailing list, substantially unchanged from last year.
In line with the results of a previous member survey, ATP's leadership focused on activism instead of meetings again this year. ATP has two main focuses - the Constitution and anticommunism.
ATP presented on the Constitution at the Northern Virginia Tea Party Regional Conference in May. ATP's Constitution project was picked up in 2016 by Tea Party Patriots, the national group led by Jenny Beth Martin. An ATP executive committee member produces a 'Constitution Minute' most weeks, which he presents on TPP's Sunday national webinars. Substantial expansion of the project is planned for 2017.
An ATP spin-off - the Anticommunism Action Team [ACAT] - has 131 people on its mailing list. ACAT has three main projects - a speakers bureau, university course material, and pushback against China's forced organ harvesting. Keep up with ACAT's activities on its website and join its mailing list by sending your request to mail@spider-and-the-fly.com. Although we no longer have regular meetings, we did provide 9 opportunities for you to rub shoulders with fellow tea partiers in 2016 - 1 conference call, 2 happy hours, 3 meetings, and 3 booths. One of the meetings was our annual 4th of July program which we have been doing since our inception. Two of the meetings were film screenings with the filmmaker available for Q&A.
We expect this pattern to continue in 2017 with happy hours combined with literature handouts (like we did at the King Street Metro for the election in October) and meetings confined to special presentations. Activism, once more, will take center stage.
- Send 226 letters to Pennsylvania voters which helped win that key state for Trump (Tea Partiers sent 100,000 letters in all)
- Hand out 450 anti-Hillary flyers at the King Street Metro
- Support the new ATP-led Constitution Project at Tea Party Patriots (monitoring news, finding writers, allies, etc.)
- Continue pushing back against Obamacare (over 10,000 tweets and 600 posts, plus weekly presentations on the Tea Party Patriots national webinar)
- Reach hundreds of people with the powerful message of what life is really like under communism
- Push back against communist May Day celebrations through a major editorial in the Washington Times, an anti-Che Guevara video seen by 7,000 people, a Twitter rally, etc.)
- Supply content for ACAT's 'Spider & the Fly' website
- Take on the United Nations, the mainstream media, and the Left with original reporting and strategic news aggregation in The Truth
- Exploit the news out of communist countries and the Left's other vulnerabilities at The Discontenterati Twitter feed
- Engage with dozens of members of the public at our booths at three Alexandria festivals
- Join in protests at the Supreme Court (Friedrichs and executive amnesty cases - in 30-degree weather!), FBI building, Vietnamese embassy, and open borders refugee rally
- Present "Free Market Warrior" Loren Spivack to a sizeable group in December 2015
- Supply photos for the ATP website and Fairfax Free Citizen
- Pack the room at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and
- Alert ATP members to a scam affecting Tea Partiers
In 2016, we continued to inform our members of Action Alerts and outside events of interest by way of email newsletter. Action Alerts this year included two protests at the Supreme Court and various phone banking opportunities for candidates who aligned with our core values. Notable events this year were Martha Boneta's Liberty Farm Festival and the Act for America annual conference. Our mailings are confined to noteworthy information. Our list is never sold or shared, and never will be.
- Why Do We Have the Electoral College? (video)
- Liberal Bias in the Media ADMITTED. Case Closed
- How Charleston Sent Al Sharpton, et al. Packing and Stayed Peaceful
- Moving Tributes to Our Wounded Soldiers
- How the Broken-Down Russian Jeep Carrying Castro is the Perfect Metaphor for Socialism
ATP has consistently been promoting our core values - limited government under the Constitution, free markets, and fiscal responsibility - as well as our implicit values (patriotism and civic engagement) since the beginning. We look forward to serving the cause of liberty again with your help in 2017.
Joys of the Season,
- ATP Executive Committee
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Meanwhile, on Virginia's Northern Neck, two Tea Parties folded into well-deserved obscurity.
ReplyDeleteThe 99th District Tea Party (Lancaster County) is history. Their website is still up but has no content:
http://www.va99teaparty.com/
Their Facebook page has not been updated since April 2015:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Virginia-99th-District-Tea-Party/225145814194602
They have not held a meeting since June 2016.
The Montross Tea Party is fading fast. Canceled their December meeting for lack of interest. For 2016, one of their meetings drew nine people . . . that was the biggest crowd all year.
Also, the 99th District Tea Party attempted to form the "First District Freedom Coalition" in June 2016. The FDFC folded in October . . . Facebook page gone, first and only meeting canceled.