While the Tea Parties are a political statement, I have had some cool (and mostly non-political) things happen as a result of my involvement in the Atlanta Tea Party and in Tea Party Patriots, home of the Nationwide Tea Party Movement.

1. I have had some extra business for my husband’s and my computer repair work we are currently doing.  This is good because heaven knows we need the money.
2. Facebook and the Tea Parties have reconnected me with many of my friends from the past, especially high school friends.  There are so many people who I have not been in touch with in years and years.  While we would have caught up some from Facebook, the Tea Parties have really increased that communication.  One friend who I carpooled with in high school, Eric, has commented on several of my posts on Facebook and has been very supportive and encouraging.  Michael, who was one of my brother’s and my neighborhood group.  Michael and Ben were in between my brother, Jonathan, and me in age.  It is hard to separate my memories from the summers in high school from the three of them.  Michael now owns a framing shop in Alabama and does wonderful photography.  Check his site out Hanging Around Hoover!  Another friend from my high school and church, Scott, who lives in Dallas now has been in touch with me as well.  On the morning of my first live tv interview on Fox and Friends, he texted me to let me know he was thinking of me and planning to watch me.  Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention Daniel.  He and I were in high school together but were in different grades and did not hang out.  He has been incredibly supportive.  He has sent me several words of wisdom through email and I really appreciate his friendship!
3. There are so many other friends that have been awesome during the planning process for the Atlanta Tea Party:  Bart, Charlice, Ali, Karen, Jeff, Christine, Linda, and Terri have been an extra special help to me and I appreciate their friendship and support.
4. Before last week, I had never been on live tv.  Now, I have been on live tv three times.  Once with my husband, Lee, on Fox and Friends and twice on Fox Business.  I have also been on Montel Williams’ Air America radio show live.  Oh, that was brutal!  I still have a lot to learn if I ever want to be a talking head and debate issues in front of a live audience.
5. One of Atlanta’s shock jock radio personalities, Regular Guy Eric von Haessler, has been a speaker at both of our Atlanta Tea Parties.  I have listened to Larry, Eric, and Southside Steve for years.  It is awesome to have a face and real conversations to put with their voices in the mornings.  Eric gave me some good pointers about how to handle live interviews in the future, which I very much appreciate!
6. I visited Los Angeles for the first time.  Unfortunately, all I saw was an office building, a hotel, and the airport.  As we were taking off on the flight back to Atlanta, Amy, the Nationwide Event Coordinator said to me, “Look, there’s the beach.”  I did get to see the beach out of the window of the airplane but that was all.  If I ever go to LA again, I am making sure I see more than offices, hotels, and airports!
7. During the production planning, I learned what “stringers” are.  Kenny Stokes from Fuse AV is incredibly awesome.  He was patient as I was learning about the technical aspects for the av equipment.  He and his Co-Worker Bob were  incredibly patient as we re-shuffled the schedule - AGAIN - not only before we went live but as we were live the night of the Atlanta Tax Day Tea Party.
8. Joel Aaron of Atlanta WGKA 920 AM has been more than incredibly supportive of our movement.  He is working on a project to get a pocket US Constitution in the hands of every Georgian.  Oh, and speaking of Joel Aaron, Eric Odom of DontGo, Lloyd Marcus who performed the “official” Tea Party Movement anthem, and I are all preacher’s kids or PKs for short.  I wonder how many more PKs there are in the movement.
9. Jonathan Dressler and his band, That 30/60, volunteered to be our live band long before Sean Hannity announced he would be broadcasting live from Atlanta.  He is an incredible young man with a very bright future.
10. Before the Tea Parties I would never have considered myself great at fundraising.  I have learned when I believe in something passionately I will ask for money for it from anyone, pretty much anywhere.
11. Amy, Debbie, and Virginia are great to have as your Co-Coordinators.  Lucky for me they are my Co-Coordinators!
12. It is kind of scary to think you are going to speak to a crowd of 10,000 + people.  When you actually have to give your speech and realize the crowd is 20,000 + the fear goes away and the energy of the crowd gives you confidence without fear.
13. I might qualify for a job as a diplomat considering all the ruffled feathers I had to smooth and negotiating I had to do to keep various speakers, sponsors, media, and volunteers, and participants/protesters happy.  I might qualify to be an Event Planner since I was able (with the help of many, many other wonderful people) to pull off the Atlanta Tea Party.   But, my favorite job by far is being mom to GigglyGirl and BusyBoy and wife to Lee!!

For those who are interested in the Atlanta Tea Party, check out this awesome video that Luke Livingston from Ground Floor Video created.

What I did not know or anticipate when I started the series was how incredibly huge the Tea Party Movement would become or that it would literally take over every aspect of my life.

The following is not about whether or not you agree with the politics of the Tea Party Movement but more about what I have been doing the past 8 weeks in relation to the Tea Party Movement. When I was on the first nationwide conference call for the Tea Party Movement on February 20th, there were about 22 of us on the call. When we hung up we thought there would be 5 or 6 Tea Parties across the nation the following Friday. Instead there were 48. In that one week, I put in many hours and had a conference call every single night.

Since then in the second wave of Tea Parties, there are now over 700 Tea Parties planned nationwide for today. I have continued to be involved at both a national level and here in Atlanta. The movement has taken over every single aspect of my life. I am working on it literally 18 - 20 hours a day. Over the last 3 weeks, I can think of 3 nights when I have had over 6 hours of sleep. Most nights I am going to bed around 2 - 3 in the morning. There have been conference calls that stretch into the wee hours of the morning. Even with all the work that has been involved in volunteering for this movement, it has been a joy to do.

The Atlanta Tea Party is the biggest event I have ever managed. I am so lucky and blessed to have 3 other women Co-Coordinating the event with me. I am also lucky and blessed to have an even larger volunteer team who has stepped up to help out and been able to run with their expertise and experience to make the event a success.

I am learning so much from this experience. I am making so many new contacts, acquaintances, and friends. The use of tools to make these connections possible is incredible. We have used social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others), blogging, Skpe, and conference calls. The ability to keep costs low and plan a nationwide event on a shoestring budgets is amazing. When this wave of Tea Parties is over today, I am really going to have to sit down and think about the things I have learned and how they can be applied to other parts of my life and to business life.

My brief tweets updating what I am doing that are pushed both here and to Facebook have given me the opportunity to reconnect with friends from earlier parts of my life (high school and even elementary school) in a way that I never would have before. Several of my friends from high school who I literally have not talked to in over 16 years have sent me the kindest messages on Facebook and through my cell phone. I know without a doubt that some of them do not even agree with my politics but they have still been supportive of my efforts as friends.

I have had experiences that I never imagined I would have. I have been interviewed on live tv, live internet tv, and live radio. Yesterday I was on the Montel Williams radio show on Air America. Air America?!! Going in I knew it was going to be a tough interview and it was. But I learned so much from it. The opportunities and experiences are incredible.

I do intend to finish posting my Surviving the Lien Years series. I plan and hope to begin that again next week. It is a series that I have internalized for months and have worked hard to put all my thoughts down on paper. Those thoughts deserve to be proofed and edited appropriately and not rushed. Thank you for bearing with me and putting up with my slack blogging habits. Obviously, as I continue to be involved in the Tea Party movement, I am going to have to develop a better plan of action to keep my blog up to date and to keep up with my fellow bloggers who I have come to consider my online friends.

If you have heard about the Tea Party Movement and have any thoughts on it, feel free to leave them here. I cannot promise that I will reply to them in the next few days but I will read all of them. Feel free to leave comments saying you do not like what the movement stand for as well. As long as the comments are polite and family friends (as is the theme of this blog), then they will remain posted here.

Have a great day! All my regular readers, thank you for putting up with my slack blog habits over the last few weeks!!

By Ashley Fuller
afuller@cherokeetribune.com

A Towne Lake woman is part of a national movement to use a “Tea Party” to once again protest taxes levied on Americans.

Jenny Beth Martin is the assistant event coordinator for the Nationwide Tax Day Tea Party movement and co-chairwoman of the Atlanta event planned for April 15, the day income taxes are due. She also is director of congressional outreach for one of the movement’s sponsor organizations, Smart Girl Politics.

The first Tea Party protest, which she also had a hand in planning, occurred in February after CNBC on-air personality Rick Santelli called for a Chicago Tea Party to protest government spending.

“It hit a chord with conservatives,” she said of the idea, which soon became a hot topic through the Twitter social networking service.

Mrs. Martin participated in a conference call to plan the first Tea Party and, within a few business days, tax-protest events were staged in more than 40 cities.

The April Tea Party could grow to 300 cities, Mrs. Martin estimates.

“This has mushroomed in a way we never imagined,” said Mrs. Martin, adding people have been energized by the concept. During the conference call to set up the February event, she said “you could sense people had excitement and passion.”

Her duties for the Atlanta event to be held at the Capitol include communicating details to attendees, securing speakers, arranging sign-making parties, coordinating carpools to the Capitol, publicity and public relations. She also maintains the event Web site at www.atlantateaparty.net.

Her involvement adds up to about 20 to 25 hours a week.

“It is like a part-time job,” she said, adding the cause is worth it. “It is a call for fiscal responsibility.”

She said the message of the Tea Party is intended to be non-partisan, noting while many people involved in the protest are Republicans and Libertarians, Democrats are invited, too.

“It is aimed at everyone in D.C.,” she said.

This month, American Solutions for Winning the Future, a non-partisan organization created by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, signed on as a sponsor of the Tea Party. Other sponsors include the DontGo Movement (http://dontgo.ning.com) and Top Conservatives on Twitter (www.topconservativesontwitter.org) as well as conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, radio host Dana Loesch and GOPUSA.

Amy Kremer of Cobb County, event chairwoman for the nationwide Tea Party movement, said people are serious about making their voices heard to elected officials.

“We are tired of the excess spending. It has got to stop,” she said, noting another large Tea Party event for the Fourth of July is in the works.

Mrs. Martin said the event has been helped by social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

“The power these tools have is amazing,” she said. “Five years ago, this would not have been possible to coordinate as rapidly. The tools were not there to do it.”

Thanks again to everyone who joined us for the Atlanta Tea Party to send the message to the liberals in the US House, the US Senate, and the White House that if they fail to repeal the “stimulus” bill then we will retire them in the next elections.

Several notable Georgia politicians and public figures spoke at the Atlanta Tea Party and were well received by the crowd which was fired up and in good spirits despite the cold, cold rain. At the bottom of this post are links to videos and photos from the event, and I’ll add more as they become available.

One of the speakers was Eric VonHaessler of the Regular Guys from Atlanta radio station Rock 100.5. An Atlanta Tea Party attendee video taped his speech and was kind enough to post it on You Tube. I’ve embedded it here:

I have the sign in sheets from the Atlanta Tea Party event. They are thoroughly soaked from the pouring rain, as was everyone out there, and as soon as they dry out I will scan them in and tabulate the numbers. Because of the pouring rain the clipboards did not get passed around to everyone, so we’re forced to use photos to try to calculate the headcount of the crowd. That’s also difficult because the umbrellas hide the heads! But we gave it our best shot.

With only 7 days from conception to execution, with the usual reluctance of conservatives to attend a public protest, and with the unpleasant weather conditions, a turnout of 500 demonstrators is pretty significant.

RELATED LINKS:
Atlanta Tea Party Various Video Clips
Senator Chip Rogers speaks at the Atlanta Tea Party
TCOT’s Photobucket Album of Nationwide Tea Parties

Moving quickly, Top Conservatives on Twitter , Smart Girl Politics, the #DontGo Movement, Americans for Tax Reform, the Heartland Institute, and American Spectator Magazine joined forces to announce a “Nationwide Chicago Tea Party”, to be held on Friday, February 27 at noon EST.

The tea party will be held simultaneously in Chicago, Washington DC, Atlanta, and dozens of locations around the US, and on Twitter, using the #teaparty hashtag.

Dress in patriotic attire and bring signs, cameras, and camcorders with you! Also, please don’t forget your tea bags and/or tea leaves!

For more information, please go to NationwideChicagoTeaParty.com