The Mississippi Tea Party Evolves

Last year, Jackson, MS residents joined together to form The Mississippi Tea Party. The newly minted organization was incorporated as a 501c(4) non-profit and was tasked to function as the local tea party for Jackson and surrounding areas. The Mississippi Tea Party held several very successful rallies in Jackson and participated in various projects along with many other Tea Party groups around the state including MeridianTeaParty.com.

The formation and growth of the Tea Party movement across the United States has been nothing short of miraculous. Every day citizens are coming together in communities, towns and cities to form various groups with the common goals of liberty, freedom, fiscal responsibility and a constitutionally limited government.

Mississippi has experienced that same growth and the time has come to connect the various groups throughout the state in order to create a stronger voice for political action and representation.  Therefore, the current legal structure, name and web site of the central Mississippi tea party, officially known as “The Mississippi Tea Party”, will be transitioned into a new statewide organization through a planned state convention, with representatives from many of the organizations throughout the state. The various groups have been cooperating, sharing resources and working together for several months. Most recently, their efforts have been largely credited with obtaining over 130,000 signatures from around the state on a petition to place a photo Voter ID law on the ballot in 2011.

While participation will be voluntary, it is hoped that most, if not all, of the current groups agree to participate in the state convention, finalize the draft constitution that has been proposed, and ratify a new Constitution for the now united Mississippi Tea Party. The state convention has been scheduled for April 30 – May 1, 2010 and will be held in the Jackson area. At the end of the convention, the existing leadership of The Mississippi Tea Party will turn over the reigns of the group to the newly elected officers and then become the leadership of the brand new Central Mississippi Tea Party.

Five Tea Party Groups have been invited to be Charter Chapters of The Mississippi Tea Party and these five groups have been asked to send 5 delegates to Jackson for a two-day convention to create the By-Laws of the new state-wide organization and to elect officers and board members from the attending delegates. Committees will also be formed at this time. MeridianTeaParty.com is honored to have been invited as one of the Charter Chapters and the MeridianTeaParty.com Board has agreed to participate.

MeridianTeaParty.com will continue to operate as it always has and will retain it’s independence and complete autonomy from The Mississippi Tea Party. The goal of The Mississippi Tea Party will be to improve communications between the various Tea Party and 9-12 groups around the State by creating and enhancing the network between groups. Ultimately, the Mississippi Tea Party will publicly represent all Tea Party/9-12 groups within the state on issues that the groups agree on.

It is the belief of the Board of MeridianTeaParty.com that the key to future success is to  build links to other Tea Party groups and sharing information equally. We cannot continue depending on the mainstream media to let us know about candidates such at Scott Brown or Mark Rubio. They will learn if they haven’t already that the more accurate information we have the more powerful Tea Party groups will become. Therefore, it is our responsibility to connect to those who believe the same way we do and to leverage the individual strengths of our separate groups and to speak with one voice whenever possible. For example, MeridianTeaParty.com counts it’s membership around 500, but just the five charter chapters of the new Mississippi Tea Party can truthfully claim a state-wide membership of close to 5,000 members. This association of Tea Party groups will make it easier to approach statewide media and will give each chapter access to resources and manpower greater than we might achieve individually.

We have posted the proposed by-laws of The Mississippi Tea Party here and you can download them, review them and send your suggestions for changes to theguru@MeridianTeaParty.com. We have also posted a poll on www.MeridianTeaParty.com to get a sense of your reaction to all of this. Feel free to send us any questions you may have and we’ll try to put together a list of all the questions and answers and publish them for everyone. This message will be published on our website and you can post your comments or questions there as well.

If you are a member of MeridianTeaParty.com and would like to participate as one of our delegates to the By-Laws Convention in Jackson, please contact us here. If we get more than five volunteers, we’ll come up with a way to select the five delegates at our March meeting (TBA).

For more information on The Mississippi Tea Party: www.themsteaparty.org