Tea Party - Successful Event

Today, about a dozen Golden Gate Objectivists participated in the Tax Day Tea Party in San Francisco. We showed up with flags, and a half dozen coordinated posters. I would guess about 600-800 people were at the event, which was very peaceful and outright beautiful, on a nice sunny day in a wonderful setting.

We all felt it was great to be out there, speaking our minds - and most of all, getting the message about Ayn Rand and the Ayn Rand Center out to a receptive audience. All of us had numerous people come up to us throughout the event, talking about how Ayn Rand should be read by everybody. I had a chance to make a few brief comments - and received loud cheers at the mention of Ayn Rand, and her quote about taking up the moral fight for capitalism. We also passed out about 200 flyers, promoting Atlas Shrugged and ARC editorials on the financial crisis and Ayn Rand's relevance - to very receptive recipients.

Overall, I think this was a very successful first event for the relaunched GGO - and I look forward to doing more of these, and having more of you participate.



Here's a short video of the event, to give you a better idea:

Tea Party Details - for GGO and for party overall

We have heard back from a number of you on your Tea Party attendance in either Sac or SF. It will be good to see you there.

Here are the last details:

GGO specific, SF Tea Party: We will meet at 10:45 am on Wednesday at Civic Center Park, corner of McAllister & Larkin. We will then join the main group, which is meeting at the corner of Polk & McAllister at 11 am. Do bring posters – if you need the files again, let me know and I will e-mail asap. We will also have copies of some recent ARC editorials with us – we will ask all of you to try and hand those out: in addition to showing our presence to the media, this is a good opportunity to get exposure to ARC/ARI to people who may be sympathetic/have read Ayn Rand, but aren’t aware of these great organizations. Find me – I’ll have the hand-outs.

General Tea Party info – courtesy of the organizer, Sally Zelikovsky:
___________________________________________________________________

“This is an overview of everything. It might be old news for some of you, so bear w/ me.

I’d like to recap and bring some newbies up to speed.

Those of you on the meet up page who haven’t responded to me directly, should read this carefully.

WHERE AND WHEN (you know the WHY):

Civic Center (Plaza) Park.
Corner of McAllister and Polk.
From there, we walk to 450 Golden Gate (one block) to Pelosi’s office.
11:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m.
Come for the entire time or part of it; we will be in either of the two locations.

BE PREPARED TO:
--cheer and chant a lot!
--sign the Grievance Scroll (a draft of which is attached)
--register so that I have your name and email for next time (there will be a next time)

SPEAKERS:
Howard Epstein (Chair of SF-GOP) will introduce Dana Walsh and Melanie Morgan will also be speaking.

I am waiting to hear from about 3 others.

WHAT TO BRING:

1—pin a teabag to your lapel, jacket.

2—bring extra tea to give to Princess Pelosi, more symbolic than anything at this point as she will be at the Mark Hopkins for her book signing.

3—signs—keep them appropriate. Stay on message (bailouts, stimulus, budget, taxes, pork, earmarks). Please refrain from signs that will take us off message and give fuel to the left wing press and left wingers who might show up.

4—cameras and videos cameras: for posterity and security.

5—period outfits, FLAGS! We will say the Pledge to start this off and we’ll need flags for that as well as patriotism in general.

6—if you have a boombox and have extra hands for it, download some music (appropriate please) and bring it along. I’m trying to work something out w/ this. It’s not the end of the world if we don’t have music…it just might be nice on the march to Princess P’s.

7—a great attitude, your principles and a sense of humor as well as purpose.

8—patience. If the HuffPo or other leftwing brigades bother to appear, DO NOT LET THEM GOAD YOU….that is their sole purpose. I say: IGNORE THEM!

SECURITY:

1--I am hoping to speak w/ the police in charge on Monday.

2—I have two big “SECURITY” signs which really serve the only purpose of deterrence (kind of like those stickers the alarm companies give you). If the lefties show up, maybe they’ll be put off by the fact that they think we have security.

3—VOLUNTEERS to carry the signs—PLEASE NOTIFY ME IF YOU WOULD LIKE THIS HONOR.

4—Remember: don’t let them goad you. Minimize your contact w/ them. If you see something of concern, get someone w/ a camera to film it and go to one of the police.

5—If you see someone and they aren’t one of us, i.e., they’re wearing an ACORN t-shirt, they have a sign that says “Homophobe or Nazi” etc., they’re screaming certain things at us, they’re not wearing a tea bag pin, do the following:

1---as above, grab someone w/ a camera and keep your eve on them;

2---grab one of our “INFIL-TRAITOR” signs and go stand next to them, have someone take a picture and stick w/ that person for a while…it might agitate them enough to leave or relocate.

3---if you feel comfortable approaching them, you can tell them this and see if it has any impact:

“We have a permit that restricts this protest to matters of taxes and the budget and stimulus/bailouts. An anti-war or pro-abortion sign isn’t by law permitted at this protest. You will have to go somewhere else w/ this sign OR take one of ours or I will have to ask the police to escort you away.”
______________________________________________________________________________________

Parking – there’s a garage right under the Civic Center, entrance on McAllister – apparently about $7.50 for two hours, for those of you driving.

Looking forward to seeming many of you!

Tea Party Details - Poster Examples & Info

As we are one week away from the tea party, I again encourage everybody to let us know if you are planning to attend the tea party with the Golden Gate Objectivists. Our pre-meeting will be this Saturday, April 11th, at 10 am, at Doyle Street Café in Emeryville (www.doylestreetcafe.com, 5515 Doyle Street, parking across the street.) Ask for Golden Gate Objectivists – we have a table reserved in the back room.

We also need to get our posters ready. To be effective, we would like all of us to have similar style/messaging:

• ‘Golden Gate Objectivists’ as a header

• Message in the middle. Possible messages:
  'The Mixed Economy Failed. Try Capitalism - The Unkown Ideal'
  'Selfishness IS a Virtue. Say NO to Sacrifice'
  'Going John Galt. Say NO to Altruism'
  'Read Atlas Shrugged Before It Happens Here.'
  'Greed is not the cause. Altruism is. Read Ayn Rand.'
  

• aynrandcenter.org url at the bottom (use approved by ARI.)

An example image is enclosed above.

If you want to make your own poster, you can e-mail us for a Word file, from which you can easily change the message wording. Other tips:

• Kinkos will print them to 22x28 or 20x30 (common card stock/foam board sizes) for $4.50 per black/white copy
• You can then glue to card stock (22x28) or foam board (20x30), both available from any office supply store (3 foam boards for $10-$12)
• Handle is thin wood from Home Depot ($0.60 per foot)
• I colored a few highlights in turquoise, to add some color (elements in turquoise in Word doc, came out light print in b/w prints, easy to color over.)

I volunteer to make up to 4 extra posters, in exchange for cost reimbursement of about $15 – if you plan on coming, and want to take me up on that offer, please e-mail me at goldengateobjectivists gmail com by end of day Thursday, April 9, so I can get them made on Friday, and bring them with me on Saturday. First come, first served...

Finally, we will send out one additional e-mail prior to the event with specific instructions on when/where to meet. Plan on being at the meeting spot (somewhere close to Civic Center Park) by 10:45 am on the 15th, so we can get ourselves organized as a group prior to the bigger event starting its march.

Looking forward to seeing/meeting many of you on Saturday and/or next Wednesday.