The Tea Party Experience

America, I'm proud of you! Today's tea party in Burleson was, in my opinion, a big success and that has nothing to do with the number of people that were there. I'm not a good judge of crowd numbers, but my glancing count would put it at over 500 at least. It was a success though because of a number of things.

First, the people peaceably assembled and patiently waited for things to get underway. There was a sampling of all age groups present and it was easy to see that most were there for the commonn purpose and excited to talk with others of like mind.

Second, the people peacably disassembled and patiently waited to leave in long lines of traffic. Parking lot intersections moved quickly because people took turns and yeilded. It was quite refreshing.

Third, the people cleaned up any trash and left the venue as nice as it was when we arrived.

The most important point of success though is that a relativley large group of people who you could tell do not usually assemble in any kind of protest finally took a stand and let their voice be heard. There was an air of excitement and hope in the crowd. I personally felt encouraged in my campaign. After all it's this line of thinking that lead me to run for local office. I had no idea at the time I decided to run that such a movement would errupt across the country, but it fits in perfectly with my message so to be able to attend today as a candidate made it that much better.

If I could have spoken to the crowd today I would have encouraged them in this event that they took the time to attend. My personal choice of action to take is to try to acheive political office, but equally as important are those who get involved in any number of ways from going to rallies to emailing their representatives to working the polls or volunteering for a candidate. All rolls are equal and all are available to us all. To find the place you fit in and attempt to affect change in your community is to fully participate in what makes America so great so, again, I'm proud of you, America!

A.J.