Tavares, FL - June 5, 2012
by Vance Jochim
Last night, in "The Villages", FL, a new tea party organization was born, The Villages Tea Party. 220 people showed up for a very organized meeting with an agenda and everything.
This group is the fourth spinoff from the old Tri-County Tea Party due to unhappiness with a dictator type management and lack of action committees. Both groups meet at 6:30 pm every Monday night, so if 220 attended this first meeting, you can see the unhappiness with the old one.
The new Villages Tea Party held a very organized meeting, promised complete transparency over their cash & accounting (which was not the case at the old one), promised that they would follow Robert's Rules of Orders and let anyone speak for two minutes (which was not allowed at the Tri-County group), promised that elections for the full Board would be held each year, promised that the members define their activities, and the Board helps implement them.
Last night's meeting was about the closest to a re-enactment of the US Constitutional meetings in the 1700's that I could imagine. "We the People" were in charge, not a dictator. Clearly many people were fed up with the dictatorial and closed style management (not leadership) of the old Tri-County Tea Party, which only wanted to focus on listening to speakers, and not taking action in elections.
They had a brochure and established six action committees (which the Tri-County group would not do) with a focus on VETTING and electing approved candidates. Somehow, Mitt Romney is already on that list. (:-)) :
This meeting had representatives from several other groups, including the Leesburg TeaParty, South Lake Tea Party, FairTax fanatics (with the FairTax RV), and two regional reps from the RPOF / Mitt Romney Campaign who described their plans for the area.
Leaders promised the website would be updated and email blasts about activities will be frequent. Membership is only $5 and I forgot to join!
My prediction is this group will be a major ACTIVE force in Tea Party activities in Florida. Keep an eye on them. If you live in the Villages area, I suggest you check them out.
The group's new, very organized website is : http://www.thevillagesteaparty.org/index.html
vj
