The Butcher, the Baker, and the Candlestick Maker!

Our third meeting this past Monday, attended by our largest crowd to date, 185 Patriots, was our most diverse crowd to date! It was a great meeting! But let's go back to the organizing committee and the two meetings and all the emails that led up to that meeting before we talk about the meeting itself.



These past two weeks have been primarily about our young organization and the issues involved with organization. We have much to do to get this train moving down the tracks. We need volunteers and we need them to fill the right positions. We need to identify what those key needs are so that when we are asked; "what can I do?", we have an answer. We need to think ahead and try to form a vision of where we want to be six months, a year, two years from now and start planning on how we are going to get there. We also have to understand how we fit in with the greater Tea Party movement and in particular with the Cincinnati Tea Party group and our sister groups in West Chester, Mason, Fairfield, Fairfield Township, Middletown, and the surrounding localities. So for the past two weeks we have been, as a group, grappling with those issues and trying to work them out. We also have some competing events that require our attention and support. The Health Care forum coming up and the September 5th Rally at the Voice of America Park will need our support, resources and effort. Plus we have bi-weekly meetings to run, issue groups to get off the ground and neighborhood groups to launch. Full plate!



Once again meeting night came and we had an agenda but no idea what the turnout would be. We were again pleasantly surprised. We had a full room of Patriots. Over 185 came to this event. We saw some familiar faces and some new faces, we saw some young faces, some old faces and some not so old faces. It was a very good cross-section of the community. Perhaps, our most diverse crowd yet, hence the title of this installment. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. We are not a mob, we are not an unruly gang of activists bent on overturning the government, we are not even any of the things the left has labeled us to be. We are simply what we say we are; a group of concerned bi-partisan citizens that care deeply about their country and the direction that we see it going and want it to change but not in the direction that the current administration is taking it. It is as simple as that. Every meeting that we have had has been polite, has had a high level of decorum and has been characterized by an extreme level of I just want my voice to be heard. All of the people that come to our meetings are looking for an outlet to have their voices heard in a meaningful and respectful manner. They do now want to be ignored. It is clear to me, at least, that many of them feel that they have been ignored for all too long. We had a speaker from Congressman John Boehner's office describe the process of what happens when you email, call or write a representative. He answered the question; "is it read, does it make a difference?". He did a very good job and a lively discussion followed his presentation. We had our normal opening remarks, pledge and prayer. We had a lady come forward and challenge anyone that wanted to run for public office to pick-up a petition from her. She had drawn all the necessary petitions and had them with her. This is representative government in action and while we may not have been ready for this at this meeting. Next time around we will be! And one gentleman has some very good prepared remarks regarding the Constitution that was very well done. Our topic of the evening, as it has been for the past couple of meetings, was the Health Care bill and we had a good exchange of ideas regarding this topic. We were able to, at the close of the meeting, recruit many people to serve on both our Health Care Issue committee and our Membership Group. So, all in all it was a very productive meeting and moved the ball forward a great deal.

Now it is time to move forward and to start the planning for our fourth meeting. Actually, we have now laid out the schedule for the rest of the year and have scheduled a joint meeting with our sister West Chester group for later on this fall. We are getting there.