Those who spoke at the Midwest Tea Party included Ken Marrero of the American Liberty Alliance, Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, Kevin Jackson of Black Sphere (who is probably the BEST MC I’ve ever seen in action!), and several others.

I spoke for about 5 or so minutes to the crowd of about 1,000. I spoke about the importance of the Tea Party Effort and what it did for the movement. I also got a chance to talk a little about the need for unity across the free-market movement, and much of what I had to say was well received by the crowd.

After I spoke, I met with a plethora of activists, organizers and coalition leaders from across the state of Missouri. There are a ton of Americans out here just craving some action. This was encouraging and I look forward to talking more with some of these folks this week.

I think one of the most important notes I picked up while at the rally is the fact that probably 99% of the folks at the rally had no idea who the “beltway crowd” is. You know, the people who get all the credit for the free-market movement, yet won’t lift a finger to get out in the trenches and fight side by side with every day Americans?

Several people mentioned the leadership vacuum that currently plagues our movement. It was made abundantly clear that the regular folks are tired of the same old beltway voices. They’re tired of being preached by those who are only in it for personal political gain. They’re tired of giving time and money to broken organizations and politicians who provide no return on investment.

I know many on our side already know this, but my conversations in Columbia reinforced the idea that the right is currently floating along without a rudder. The good news is that we’re still rowing the boats forward… the bad news is the direction is a little sloppy.

That said, it appears that new leaders are emerging and everyday Americans are beginning to organize in a huge way.

I was very encouraged and delighted to have been invited as a speaker at the event. We need more of this… lot’s more.

Me speaking at the Midwest Fairtax Rally…

For the record, I never claimed to be behind the idea of the tea party. In fact, I make quite the opposite clear in my letter. I did say, however, that I started the site and played a significant role in getting that ball rolling.

I actually enjoyed the segment. I thought it was, surprisingly, somewhat fair and almost spot on. And while I disagree about the issues mentioned being issues the movement can rally around, his guest did get me thinking about how to fold these issues into a larger message for the movement.

Thoughts?

But, as has been pointed out by a few trusted friends, many of you don’t know me personally. The same can work the other way around… I don’t know many of you either.

As we plan and develop strategy on how to work together within a collaborative effort to save the free-market movement, I hope to be able to change this a bit. My hope is that we can indeed begin developing a better relationship and view what we all do as a team effort.

The last message I sent out about “infighting” within the Tea Party Movement sparked a lot of controversy. Even Keith Olbermann came after me. A handful of folks strongly disgareed with my sentiment, but hundreds of you emailed me to show agreement with the basic gist of what I was trying to say.

In essence, my message is simple. We have a lot of battles to fight and we need to choose them wisely. We can’t afford to spend all of our energy fighting big government at the Federal level if by doing so we’re going to lose all of our freedom in the local realm. I’m not suggesting we drop the ball on one or the other, but we need to be strategic in where we choose to place our time and energy, and we need to do so as a collaborative effort.

The Tea Party effort on April 15th was a powerful event. It was powerful in that, for the first time in many years, the free-market movement came together as a collaborative team. More than 800 organizers worked together to enable more than a million Americans to gather across all fifty states.

While many on both sides of the isle will scoff at us and giggle with insult, anyone with a level head on their shoulders will understand that what we did on April 15th was Historic. And not only Historic… but downright unprecedented.

My belief is that our foes desire us to focus on the wrong efforts moving forward. Those who oppose the free-market system would love nothing more than to see us waste energy in battles that have little relevance and force us to use our energy in ways that accomplish very little between now and election day of 2010.

In my opinion we need to build a much larger, much more comprehensive movement that can simultaneously be involved in multiple political battles… both federal and local. We need to fight back against socialized medicine, while at the same time get true free-market individuals elected all the way down at the school board level.

I’m working behind the scenes right now with a team of folks who get the big picture. We’re laying out a path that we believe will help us create an environment where you can take ownership of your efforts at the local level, but at the same time be a part of a larger, more collaborative fight happening nationwide.

I’m launching my own new site at EricJOdom.com. I plan on writing a couple of these messages per week, and I want to maintain an open blog comment policy where you can join in on the conversation. My desire is to share ideas with you, and use this online platform to enable you to do the same with me.

The team I’ve put together is preparing a major project launch on June 1st, 2009, and we hope each of you can/will get involved. Our goal is to develop an online environment that is unlike anything we’ve seen on our side to date. This new project will foster a true online grassroots movement where local activists can take ownership of local activism using the web as a mass messaging mechanism.

I want to ask you, as a personal favor and as a partner in this fight against socialism, to join my new list and subscribe to my RSS feed.

Together we really can move political mountains. Together we can take our country back.

Either way… the days of me sitting comfortably behind my monitor doing stealth style eActivism seem to have come to an abrupt end.

But first… how did I get into politics?

About seven years ago I was working for a major US Bank. The world was different then (Home equity loans were flying off the shelf like hotcakes and the economy was making HUGE surges forward) and the political sphere, for me at least, was almost as foreign as mars.

I was only 22 years old and I had no clue how the party structure functioned, nor did I care, really. I wasn’t registered to vote and at the time had little interest in the political environment. If memory serves me well, I was plugged in to a few discussion forums and was beginning to get a taste, but it was nothing serious and it certainly wasn’t a huge focus of mine.

While working at the bank I had the privilege of getting some first hand training on the mindset of internet users and internet marketing in general. During my time at the bank I also developed a profitable network of travel websites that would eventually help build a bridge between my 9-5 life and that of a full time political consultant.

Believe it or not, it wasn’t taxes, immigration, spending, regulation or any of those issues that first pulled me in to politics. It was, in fact, affirmative action policy within the bank I worked for.

I remember getting a company memo that bragged about how this particular bank had not only met their Affirmative Action quota, but had actually exceeded it. Right about the time of this memo, I also had a friend who was denied a position and bypassed by a “minority” who was potentially far less qualified, yet fit the banks needs for affirmative action success. The individual who was promoted also happened to be a friend of mine… and he eventually admitted why he believed he had been promoted.

I never complained publicly because this person was a friend. Besides, I was young, naive, and I wouldn’t have known where to start even if I did want to complain about it. But the real gold here is that it set me on an inquisitive path of questions and research.

Why would this nonsense be happening? Was society really being rigged and ripped off like this? And if so, who is responsible for setting these wheels in motion?

What I began to see was an irresponsible government whos only interest appeared to be re-election. And on top of that, this government, which I had trusted my entire young adult life, was betraying me by using my tax dollars for political gain and pet projects.

And so it began…

I was young, ambitious, aggressive and not afraid of confrontation. Which, much to my surprise, set me on a collision course with the Nevada Republican Party.

In early 2004 I started a couple local citizen groups… one being the “Washoe County Taxpayer Coalition” or something like that. We were about 30 strong and met on a weekly basis. We were all fairly new to the political process and were only just getting our feet wet. We spent the first part of the year watching the Bush campaign unfold, and we studied a lot of what the state legislature was doing and how the initiative process was working throughout the state (Nevada had a LOT of big ballot initiatives in both 2004 as well as 2006).

Being a young kid who didn’t like government and had some taste in web design/online marketing, I quickly noticed a huge void in the right online in Nevada. It was pitiful… to put it nicely. The Washoe County Republican Party had a website that looked like a 5 year old had designed it. They would have been better off scanning a faxed document and making the resulting image their webpage design.

The Nevada Republican Party wasn’t much better.

The Democrats were slightly in a better position online at the time, but not by much. That said, John Kerry was a complete idiot and there was no way I was going to support what he was up to. Bush was making some big promises again, some of which I bought in to (big mistake), so I decided the Republican party is where I would plant my efforts.

I remember visiting the Bush campaign office in South Reno. I clearly remember how excited the Bush guy was when I offered to build, for free, a shiny new website that Nevadans could use to collaborate and network for the Bush campaign. I spent the next two days (only two hours of sleep both nights) building a high end website (unlike anything any Nevada Republicans had ever designed) that I could donate to the Bush campaign to help promote the effort.

Unfortunately, Jane Maxfield, the Washoe County Chair at the time, had a fit when she learned that “some kid” had gone off and designed a website without her “permission.” The next day, the Bush guy called and asked me to remove the website because it had not been “authorized” by the Republican Party.

Over my dead body…

The Washoe County Republicans had the washoerepublicans.com domain. I bought washoe-republicans.com and within a week was outranking them for their own name and keywords. I eventually used the domain to promote and market a new PAC that some friends and I had started (Nevada Independent Conservative PAC) and some of our message. It helped us drive a ton of traffic to our own efforts and we built a solid network through that domain.

After Bush was elected I started attending Republican party meetings and functions. It was a nightmare to say the least. The entire experience was gut wrenching and something I can’t forget soon enough.

Never mind the fact that I was always the youngest person present by about 20 years… these people were stuck in their archaic mindset. They refused to hear ideas on how to embrace new ways of messaging. They scoffed at me when I suggested strategy for involving young folks in the party process. During the entire year of 2005 I found myself at constant war with the Nevada Republican Party.

It was during 2005 that I concluded the Republican Party was about as effective as a lead balloon in engaging people in politics, but I could find no peace in working with Democrats and the Libertarian party of Nevada was… well… the Libertarian Party.

During this time I was doing a lot of “side work” developing websites for campaigns and issues. Driving messages, causing major headaches for lawmakers who couldn’t keep their hands off our taxes and freedoms, and generally being a pain in the ass for those who opposed the free-market principles our country was founded on.

At the end of 2005 I had decided to get involved with some conservative campaigns. I took a paid consulting position with a federal congressional campaign, a statewide constitutional campaign, a district attorney race and several smaller local races for the 2006 election cycle.

It was a brutal year of constant Lincoln Day Dinners and all the rest of the hell that comes with the Republican campaign circuit. And it further enforced my dissatisfaction with the Republican Party and their complete lack of ability to get real fiscal conservatives elected.

Time for a breather…

After the 2006 election season, I took a few months off to deal with family issues and get away from the political realm for a bit of a break. In January of 2007, my good friend Chuck Muth asked me to join him in following the legislature as well as the first Conservative Leadership Conference happening in Reno, Nevada later that year.

I spent most of 2007 lobbing political bombshells at idiot lawmakers who felt lowering the age of those required to wear a life jacket in a boat was more important than properly planning for a catastrophic economic collapse throughout the state of Nevada… among many other really, REALLY stupid things.

I also worked to build some behind the scenes blogger networks and began building a strong web based coalition of free-market activists.

Go Cubs!!!

In November of 2007, I took a position with the Sam Adams Alliance and moved to Chicago. I worked as an employee of the Sam Adams Alliance through September of 2008, when I decided to step out on my own and began a web strategy consulting business that allowed me to be free of the constraints of a 501c3 environment.

This move was mostly due to the success of the DontGo Movement. What happened in August of 2008 was significant in that it happened as a volunteer effort and created a network of tens of thousands of activists who were ready to act at any given time.

As I transitioned my life from a behind the scenes kind of political activist to a more free and open free-market web strategist, I also had the opportunity to strengthen and solidify the base of activists that had developed out of the energy debate of last August.

Finally, when Rick Santelli called for a Chicago Tea Party… I was working from home and ready to respond. Fortunately, so were thousands of other Americans, and because of this we were able to immediately put together a web based infrastructure that could facilitate a mass online movement.

Post April 15th plans…

Obviously the Tea Party effort was a HUGE success. Estimates suggest that more than a million Americans stood side by side on April 15th, 2009.

A lot of really good things are happening now and I’m honored to be playing a role in this grassroots movement. There is a collaborative effort in the works to lay out a strategic plan for 2010 and 2012, so I highly recommend you get plugged in and keep an eye on what we’re up to.

Well, that about brings us up to speed here. I hope this helps you know who I am. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at ericjodom@gmail.com any time.

-Eric Odom

Because of this, my blogging has been all over the map. I’ve been a part of several group blogs, and I’ve had a handful of personal blogs covering a wide range of topics. But the past six months has lead me to all but abandon every one of these efforts.

I think the main reason is that blogging, for me, is very slow and hard to maintain. When I react to energy and movements online, I do so within minutes. Rapid response to me is about instant collaboration via social media and other real time conversation mechanisms.

Blogging takes time. Lot’s of time. I’m not suggesting it can’t be effective, because for many it is. But while others are thinking of what to write, I’m acting on ways to build instant grassroots momentum. And I always feel like blogging drags me down.

So why start doing it again?

The Tea Party Movement taught me a very important lesson about people in leadership roles in online movements. If you don’t explain who you are, others will try and do it for you. This happened to me from many directions over the past couple of months.

Liberals grasp things out of thin air all the time. That was no surprise. There were vile and inaccurate things written about me all over the left wing blogosphere during the Tax Day Tea Party effort. Most of it I ignored… the parts I didn’t ignore I only read because of the humor involved.

But what really surprised me is the attacks leveled by many on our side. Specifically, Little Green Footballs and several other large righty blogs. LGF, for example, took a page out of the lefty playbook and assumed something based on a guess… and a bad one at that. Not only did LGF inaccurately paint me as a Ron Paul crazy, he also asserted that I had written something for the “National Expositor.”

The fact is, the National Expositor lifted that post from one of my own blogs and reprinted it. But facts like that often don’t make it to posts when you as the individual being written about do not make it clear who you are and what you do.

So, while I believe LGF was completely off mark and mischaracterized me as a person, I also see how I made the mistake of not painting a clear picture for these folks to pull information from.

With that said, I’ve listened to a few trusted friends and decided to act on the suggestion that I begin building a coherent online profile for myself.

The plan

I plan on using this space to discuss my political views/ideas, as well as a heavy dose of web strategy for the free-market movement online.

I hope you’ll grab my RSS feed and subscribe to my new email newsletter… “The eActivist,” and I look forward to talking with you through comments here on my blog.

Thanks for reading. And if you’re a freedom fighter for the free-market movement… keep doing what you do.

-Eric Odom

Right Online is now the second major conference to provide training for internet activists. The Conservative Leadership Conference kicked off last year’s event with the slogan “Conservatives & The New Media”. This year the Conservative Leadership Conference is hosting an all day Samsphere event put on by the Sam Adams Alliance, and gives the west coast its second injection of full scale online training.

While Daily KOS is providing the far left with one big conference each year, the Conservative Leadership Conference and Right Online are both moving in to create an environment for free-market minded activists to network, share ideas, and learn from the best in the business. And they’re doing it VERY well.

Indeed, Right Online was a huge success. I had the honor of speaking on a panel titled “New Media & The Conservative Movement”. Soren Dayton was the panel moderator, and the room was pretty packed. We had a plethora of questions that allowed for solid discussion revolving around the idea that the right is behind, but making serious and much needed changes to correct it and move forward in a manner that creates success.

The numbers I’m hearing fluctuates, but the San Francisco Chronicle said there were about 500 present for AFP and Right Online. This isn’t the 5,000 that Netroots attracts, but it’s a pretty good number for a first time center-right event. I would certainly consider it a success.

Speakers at Right Online included Erick Erickson, Micheal Steele, Michelle Malkin (not a big Malkin fan, and I thought her speech was lacking, but she added some “star power” to the lineup), Michael Williams, Ken Emanuelson, Matt Sheffield, Grover Norquist, Bob Barr, John Fund, and many more.

Overall I would have to give this event four stars out of five. There were a few things I found lacking, but for a first time event of such nature for AFP, this was a two thumbs up.

Other Bloggers talking about Right Online include:
-Right Wing Sparkle
-Patriot Writer
-The American Mind
-Voice in the Wilderness
-Urban Grounds
-Lone Star Times
-Blue Dot Blues
-Acton Blog
-Travis Monitor
-North Shore Exponent

I have some audio files as well as video footage that I’ll post later on, so be sure to watch for the next few posts.

-Eric Odom

Sure, I might be posting somewhat prematurely considering the fact that while posting this our site is locked down and in “maintenance mode”. That being said, this blog can be found and seen so I figured why the heck not?

In this post I’ll talk about two things. First, I’ll plug this blog and explain what it’s all about. Second, I’ll talk a bit about what Blogivists.com is.

Eric Odom @ Blogivists.com
As if I don’t do enough blogging already!!!

I’ve decided to launch this blog as a sort of “developers” blog for Blogivists.com. In this blog I’ll write about some of the technical aspects of the community, as well as random updates that have to do with the back end of the system.

We have a LOT of cool things planned for the site, including a ton of theme releases, plugins, discussion forums, wiki’s and more! If you’re an RSS junkie like me, please grab my feed and stay tuned for updates.

If RSS is not your cup of tea, feel free to bookmark me and check back often.

Blogivists.com
I’m sure Mike VanWinkle and the rest of the Sam Adams Alliance crew will soon publish a much more detailed explanation of this site. But until then I’ll offer the short version.

Blogivists.com is an exciting new project being put together by Sam Adams Alliance. The project is being built around a vision to develop a web community where citizens and activists can set up free Wordpress blogs. The blogs are 100% free with no strings attached.

What do you get with a free Blogivists.com blog?

-100% FREE hosting for life
-Personalized domain (www.yourblogname.blogivists.com)
-Free Blogivists.com e-mil address
-Safe and secure blogging environment
-Like minded, limited-government seeking community
-Many themes to choose from (coming soon)
-Plugins that help make your blog more interactive
-Widgets to customize your blog
-Powerful world class Wordpress software
-The ability to embed videos and images
-LOT’S MORE!!!

I’ve built several communities like this in the past, but this one looks to be the most exciting. I’m honored to be a part of the Blogivists team and I look forward to the things to come.

If you ever have basic technical questions or would like to suggest a feature for the site, please comment here on my blog or drop me an e-mail.

Blog Hard,
-Eric Odom
eric@blogivists.com