Fellow DontGo Movement members,

This will be my last message to you as the Director of the DontGo Movement. Effective May 11th, 2009, Ken Marrero will become the Executive Director of the DontGo Movement for the final transitioning phase of the organization.

But I’m also writing you about a new organization and opportunity that builds on the work we have done together as part of the DontGo Movement. Something that will put us — together — on the forefront of a political revolution. It is an effort that will give each of us an opportunity to do just what we’ve always wanted — have a united voice that cannot be ignored in Washington.

I’ll talk more about the transition in a moment, but first I want to say a few parting words to the DontGo Movement and the brand that we’ve all been a part of for the past year (almost a year anyway…).

Words cannot express what an honor it has been working with all of you under the DontGo brand during the past ten months (and many of you for the past seven years!). When Allen Fuller and I decided to use the Twitter hashtag “#dontgo” last August 1st, we had no idea tens of thousands of Americans would immediately join us in a collaborative effort to oppose government regulation on energy. We both still ponder the significance of that day and have a hard time believing it all really happened that fast.

The past ten months have been challenging and rewarding. We’ve experimented with projects that completely flopped, and we worked with projects that grew into successes beyond our wildest dreams.

You stood with us through thick and thin. You were there when we needed help, and you worked countless hours making things happen the naysayers claimed could never succeed.

For that I personally want to thank you.

The Problem

As you already know, our Government has openly declared war on the free-market foundation our great country was built upon. Not just at the Federal level; Rather, it’s happening at ALL levels of government.

In fact, here in Illinois it’s safe to say government is completely out of control. Well, let me re-phrase that… politicians are completely out of control. Illinois Governor Quinn is proposing a budget with MAJOR tax increases across the board for the state.

It’s not just Illinois. It’s a problem across the entire country because those elected to represent us put their self interest before their constitutional duty to protect our freedoms and hard earned income.

Unfortunately, we’ve already lost a number of major political battles recently. Republicans and Democrats have completely failed us, passing flawed budgets and bailouts that potentially cripple the free-market system and cost “We the People” trillions of dollars.

At the time we weren’t properly organized. We could not collaborate as a unified national effort to confront bad Government when it was vital we do so. Sure, there are hundreds of think tanks, non-profits, PACs and grassroots organizations that tackle parts of the problem as a specialty (The DontGo Movement is one of them), but we still don’t have a mass collaboration movement for the free-market side of the argument.

The Solution

A few weeks ago, at TaxDayTeaParty.com, we asked you to share your ideas with us. Thousands of Americans submitted suggestions. We’ve read through a ton of them, and there seems to be a common thread:

No sense of unity within the movement.

We fully intend to change this.

The DontGo Movement was a campaign centered around the energy debate. The Tax Day Tea Party was a campaign helping hundreds of thousands of Americans hit the streets in protest of extreme spending at all levels of government.

While strong networks of activists have developed through campaigns like these, there has never been a larger, more comprehensive, web-based umbrella for all free-market movement collaborative efforts to function under.

The DontGo Movement provided this environment for the energy debate. The Tax Day Tea Party provided a similar environment for the nationwide April 15th protests. Our goal is to develop an environment in which collaboration can occur for each and every issue/campaign/political battle within the free-market movement.

The Issues

While we understand there are a lot of issues that Americans get passionate about, we believe that in the short term our unified efforts should be highly focused on defeating the blatant attacks on the free-market system. This should be done by focusing our energy on a handful of costly and detrimental Federal issues, while at the same time working together to take back our government at the local level.

The Federal issues to be focused on will be discussed soon, but ideally our fight should be in the socialized health care, cap and trade, union card check, internet taxes, free speech and related regulation realms. These are all issues that, if succeed in the direction of those who oppose the free-market system, will make it virtually impossible for us to win on any other issues.

It is vital that we ensure our free-market system survives first and foremost. If the socialist agenda removes our ability to flourish as individual Americans building success on our own accord, we’re doomed in all other political battles.

Local Government

The hard part about what we’re doing here is that our role in the Federal issue battles is just the beginning. We also need to understand as a movement the vital importance of regaining control of our school boards, city councils, county commissions, state legislatures and state constitutional offices.

Again, if we allow teachers’ unions, corrupt politicians and special interest groups to dictate what we spend and where it goes… our businesses will fail to succeed financially. We as individuals will fail to succeed financially.

If we become a broken, unproductive and over-governed society, we’ll never be able to properly oppose big government and extreme spending/taxation.

The time is now.

We need to elect true free-market advocates at all local levels of government. We need to fire each and every elected official who supports new taxes and makes no effort to streamline government, and we need to replace them with fiscally responsible Americans.

We need to storm school board meetings and state houses, letting them know their poor actions will no longer be tolerated. We need to pass new laws that require citizen votes or 2/3rds majority votes on ALL budgets.

We need total transparency at every level of government and we need it now, not two years from now.

American Liberty Alliance

The American Liberty Alliance, or ALA, is currently developing an online environment where mass collaboration can occur. The free-market movement needs to build sound strategy and infrastructure that will enable a unified effort to implement political success in every area mentioned above.

ALA will be identifying grassroots leadership in every state, and eventually, every county across the country. Once identified, these leaders will take ownership of this movement and work with a national effort to coordinate activity.

As this is happening, ALA will be building comprehensive online infrastructure that will enable Americans from all political backgrounds and parties to join in on an effort to take back our country.

Using state-of-the-art networking tools, messaging mechanisms, and data management, every activist and leader within the alliance will be able to communicate with the movement at large.

To further enable political success, ALA will partner with groups such as American Majority, Smart Girl Politics and many, MANY others to ensure all freedom loving members of the alliance have all the resources needed to win.

Moving On

The DontGo Movement served an important role in helping us fight the energy issue as well as helping us develop some online infrastructure, but it’s now time to rally the free-market movement in a much bigger way.

It’s time for We the People to take a stand.

Get Involved

The American Liberty Alliance and all of its projects are set for a “soft launch” on June 15th, 2009. The full scale launch is set for July 1st, 2009.

In the meantime, if you’re looking to get involved in a leadership role or want to help us build the 50 state network… we have PLENTY of projects and work that will need to be done. Please send your ideas and information to team@americanlibertyalliance.com

If you’re currently working with a local taxpayer coalition, group or network and want to get your efforts plugged in to ALA, drop us a line at collaborate@americanlibertyalliance.com.

And finally, you DO NOT want to miss our major announcements as they begin on June 1st. Go to AmericanLibertyAlliance.com and make sure you sign up for the updates.

Thank you all for the work you’ve done so far. I believe we can make a difference, but I believe it’s going to have be a team effort if we want to see direction-changing success.

Let’s go do it.

-Eric Odom
Executive Director
American Liberty Alliance (formerly the DontGo Movement)

We ended up with just under 5,000 votes with almost 100% feeling the CNN attack was offensive. 5,000 votes may not mean much to some, but we consider it a fairly strong statement. So strong, in fact, we’ve decided to respond with a full scale internet campaign to help us start building a coalition that opposes CNN and those who enable them to spew their hate.

CNN Offensive

CNNOffensive.com is in place to accomplish several goals.

1) Demand a Public Apology
And not just a standard, general apology. No, we want a direct apology issued to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who attended a Tea Party on April 15th.

2) No More Taxpayer Funded Soapbox
CNN’s offensive, partisan content is displayed in public owned spaces all across the country (Municipal Airports, for example) and we believe this is unacceptable. We intend to identify these areas and begin contacting local government to have this come to an end.

3) Contact CNN Sponsors
CNN is free to spew partisan speech all they like. We’re firm believers in free speech and we’re happy to see CNN use it just like any other Americans can. That being said, we the people are free to choose what companies we spend our money on.

The companies who choose to sponsor CNN, in our opinion, choose to support the offensive message CNN publishes. There for, we will choose to support their competitors wherever possible.

Please visit CNNOffensive.com and sign our petition. If you’re on Facebook, make sure you join the CNN Offensive Facebook Group.

The site was almost an instant hit, getting slapped with surges of traffic in less than 48 hours. My good friends over at Smart Girls Politics joined up, followed by the folks at TCOT, and before we knew it, we had something BIG on our hands.

We’re currently clearing an easy 90,000 unique visits a day. The traffic numbers have climbed so high that the guys over at GetClicky have disabled our account due to extremely high pageviews.

In fact, according to Alexa (one can argue the importance of Alexa data, but the numbers are fascinating none the less), the TaxDayTeaParty.com website is more popular than BarackObama.com!

Granted, there are certainly blogs and sites out there that by far exceed the numbers we’re seeing, but remember… we started this website less than six weeks ago.

All things considered… we’ve done a damn fine job. And this is all thanks to people like YOU who have pitched in countless hours and energy to make this all happen.

Nothing rivals a true grassroots movement.

NOTE: I found this post along the lines of the same topic after I published mine. Well worth the visit.

-Eric Odom

In fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is, the RNC has been about as effective as a lead balloon in actually engaging the free-market minded grassroots with regards to political action. The RNC, as well as all but two Republican members of Congress, have been eerily silent over the past few weeks.

RNC Chairman Steele’s office did reach out to me on Tuesday (although rumor has it that he is now denying such a conversation took place) morning and the person I spoke with asked if we would be interested in having him speak at the Chicago Tea Party. This request was, of course, at the last minute and only after national media eyes became involved.

But that was the first time the RNC had really injected itself at the national level into any part of the Tea Party Movement.

Why do we use “Silent Majority” as our national brand?

Because the vast majority of those involved in the Tea Party effort are people who have sat at home yelling at their TV’s for the past few years. This is a group of folks who have gone on with their lives in attempt at the American dream, only to be shell shocked by a sudden and bold surge towards full scale socialism… and we’ve had enough!

Most of those involved in the Tea Party Movement do not wish to see something with RNC or DNC involvement. We do not want the failed two party structure injecting itself into this movement for political gain.

That’s not to say that there aren’t Republicans or Democrats involved, because we have people identify themselves as both involved all across the country.

But there is certainly no evidence whatsoever that the Tea Party Movement is some kind of orchestrated GOP effort disguising itself as non-partisan. In fact, the evidence suggests quite the opposite.

Take Chicago, for example. A hand full of local young Republicans have been trolling and following me all over the web in an attempt to attack me at every opportunity. They hunt me down on Twitter and Facebook, lashing out at me because I refused to promote their REPUBLICAN sponsored event happening later in the day on April 15th.

Indeed, the FUNDED organizations and media outlets of the left are swinging at this movement from all angles, attempting to paint this as a GOP backed effort. But the reality is that thousands of free-market minded Americans don’t see it that way.

The DontGo Movement was attacked last year by these same groups who claimed that we were taking oil money (still waiting on those magical checks, BTW), and now they claim we’re under the spell of the Republican Party.

What part of “we’re just Americans and we’re mad as hell” do they not understand?

-Eric Odom

This is my response:

Hi Kelly,

As I mentioned on the phone the other day, I very much appreciate the fact that Chairman Steele is now finally starting to reach out to the true grassroots side of the free-market movement in America. Unfortunately, it appears that he has only just decided to reach out after realizing how big the movement has gotten and how much media is now involved.

That said, we’re still excited to know that Chairman Steele will be in Chicago and we hope, after knowing that he’ll be in the city, that he’ll stop by and mingle with the Americans who will be rallying on April 15th. This will also present a fantastic time for Chairman Steele to LISTEN to what we have to say and perhaps gather some thoughts on what the RNC needs to be doing moving forward.

With regards to stage time, we respectfully must inform Chairman Steel that RNC officials are welcome to participate in the rally itself, but we prefer to limit stage time to those who are not elected officials, both in Government as well as political parties. This is an opportunity for Americans to speak, and elected officials to listen, not the other way around.

I do hope that Chairman Steele will join us as a regular American in protest of Government spending and extreme taxation.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Regards,
-Eric Odom

The trucks are being used to help promote the Burleson Tea Party.

Yeah, we’ve heard them all. In fact, as I write this, Amy Kremer (National Events Coordinator for TaxDayTeaParty.com) and our volunteer team are all neck deep in e-mails. I was just told that our general info e-mail account has 430 unanswered e-mails that we haven’t been able to get to yet.

Believe me when I say… we’ve heard them all. The negative tone comes from all sides of the political spectrum. Some lash out at the Tea Party Movement because they want it to fail, some because they envy the true grassroots nature and wish it was something they could control or take credit for, others just make these sorts of comments with malice in mind.

But the reality is that these comments are all completely missing the point. The Tea Party Movement is merely a step in the right direction in the war against tyranny and socialism. Those of us working at the National level are under no delusion that we’re going to change the world on April 15th. To assume we believe such would be borderline absurd.

We do, however, understand that the original Boston Tea Party Protest only had a few hundred participants and set the movement on a path to ultimate victory against the King of England. We understand that it wasn’t “A-Listers” or “Top Shelf Speakers”. It wasn’t the usual “leaders” or well known faces. It was, instead, every day business owners and taxpayers who quietly met in pubs, taking the opportunity to network and contemplate collaborative strategy.

On April 15th, hundreds of thousands of Americans will gather in more than 360 cities across all 50 states to proclaim their lack of confidence in our Government. We the people will shake hands, network, share ideas, discuss our frustrations, let some steam out, and begin to develop new coalitions and citizen groups.

April 15th will be Historic in nature not because we instantly changed the world, but because we set in motion a machine that will counter out of control Government and eventually put it back in the hands of the people.

If you’re one of those who likes to sit around and ask “what good does it do to go to a silly tax day teaparty?”, we would like to follow that up with a question to you…

What good are you doing by staying home?