Houston Area Liberty Campaign

We will be having our next general session meeting this Saturday, May 2, 2009 at Larry’s BBQ (map). It’ll be a packed session full of great updates. See below for a full schedule.

• 6:00 p.m. Executive Commitee Meeting (Members only) – Members are invited to sit in on our Executive Committee meeting and offer comments and feedback to the overall direction of HALC.
• 6:30 p.m. New Member Meet-and-Greet (Open to everyone) – Come and chum it up with new faces or meet some old ones!
• 7:00 p.m. General Session Meeting (Open to everyone) – The meet and potatoes of our get together. Members and new folks are invited to attend lively discussion, hear about organizational progress and vote on HALC-wide measures.

For more information visit our meetup.com calendar.

Ok, so we’re still high from an awesome tea party and are eager to see how the media will look upon it. The Houston Chronicle (which about 2,000 left over protesters decided to march on) reported the Houston Tea Party, in this author’s opinion, very fairly.

Here’s an excerpt

Protesters turned out by the thousands Wednesday in Houston and other cities across the nation to voice their displeasure with big government spending and what they called the erosion of people’s constitutional rights.

Among those taking part in the Tax Day Tea Parties was Tim Volzer, who took an hour away from work to attend a rally of 450 people in Pearland pushing for less government spending. The roofing company salesman wore a sign on his back that summed his feelings: “No taxation without representation, Bro.”

See the full article here: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6374948.html

If you haven’t seen it, you must. HALC member and videographer extraordinaire Bryan Thome has put together this excellent video summarizing the Houston Tea Party.

A note from Bryan:
Thanks to the many volunteer organizers that made this event possible. Felicia Cravens is the lead Houston Tea Party organizer.

http://twitter.com/Somethingfishie

Audio track: “Hope Anthem” (remix) performed by Marc Scibilia
Available for free download.

http://marcscibilia.com

To get a sense of how big the crowds were at the Houston Tea Party yesterday you have to look at this photo.

The crowds were so huge they had to shut the entrances to the event. People continued to wait outside and I even saw a few young folks jumping the fence to evade police to enter the event! check out the gallery and videos below.

Bill Tofte Addresses the crowd about Constitutional overstepping and HALC’s two pet issues, Audit the Fed and supporting State Sovereignty.

Today, groups across the country are organizing Tax Tea Parties. Objecting to the gargantuan amounts of money spent by the government to bail out failing businesses and banks. For many of us who have been involved in this movement, we’re delighted to see so many people finally waking up but the obvious question really is…

…what now?

Skeptics of these tea parties are saying that the attendees are just blowing off steam and will quietly retreat into silence once “they get it out of their system.” That these events are simply random acts of liberty.

One of the most damaging events in any movement are random acts. When the world doesn’t change, and  random acts can lead to burnout and failure. As a movement, we must know how to replicate success, but more importantly, how to grow stronger. What is the event after the event?

We at the Houston Area Liberty Campaign feel we have the answer.

HALC has developed a local plan that intends to make it easy to participate, join forces and get results. We encourage you to explore our site, learn our mission and join our fight. The only way to affect real change, is to join forces and work toward a common goal.

Don’t let this tea party become a random act of liberty.

Before the Houston Area Liberty Campaign was the Houston Area Liberty Campaign we were just a bunch of motivated folks who wanted to affect change during the 2008 presidential primary season. Someone found meetup.com and we immediately flourished.

Yet, times are a changin’. Since our rag-tag activism days we’ve adopted official bylaws, had two officer elections and have expanded our purpose. Up to this point we’ve used our meetup.com site as the primary way of communicating with our members but it has its limitations.

Our new site will make it easier than ever to tell our story to our existing members and new ones alike. We can feature specific events based on how well they align with our mission, keep members up to date with Executive Committee and Action Group goings-on.

Even though we’re working on a shoestring budget (this site costs about $30/year to put up) you’ll find HALC.us full of advanced features such as mobile access (for posting AND reading), the dynamic commenting system Intense Debate and much more!

We hope you enjoy the site!