Kudos to the local Appleton paper for interviewing Jim Steinke, organizer of the hugely successful Appleton Tea Party. A wide range of topics were covered.
Jim Steineke put on a party last week to give a voice to those who think government is spending too much of our money.
His Tea Party rally Wednesday in Appleton drew a crowd that by some estimates topped 2,000. Steineke, the Vandenbroek town chairman and an Outagamie County supervisor, said Tuesday that he wanted to provide an outlet for people who are increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of the federal government and show them that they can make a difference in pushing for change.
What Jim wanted to accomplish with the Tea Party.
Being in local government, I’ve seen people become detached from their governments, whether it’s local, state or federal. They’ve kind of drifted away. They don’t feel like their voice can make an impact. So this event was a way to show people that we can all come together, we can have one voice on an issue. I think people have finally gotten to the point where they want to force their elected officials to start listening. They’re real interested in getting involved in their government because they can see it spinning out of control. They see themselves losing the kind of America they grew up in and they’re nervous about it.
The overall idea behind the event was to gather as many like-minded people together as we could, people who are frustrated with the direction of the country. That’s not just the direction of the country in the last couple months. It’s over the last few years. These people are frustrated and they want their government back. So we wanted to gather all these people in one place and show the elected officials out there that, hey, there is a big contingent involved that’s concerned about the direction and want to change it.
The central issue of the last Tea Party – Lack of accountability with government spending and taxes.
Overall, that was the main focus of our event. It seems like, every time you open up the paper, it’s one billion-dollar bailout after another. There just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of accountability. They seem to be continually tossing money at issues without any real results and without any real accountability. They talk a good game, that there’s going to be accountability and there’s going to be follow-up, but I just don’t think we can believe it.
The Appleton Tea Party was a starting point.
This shouldn’t be looked at as, we made our point and now we’ll quietly file away. I think it’s real important to capitalize off of people’s frustration and continue that momentum and continue to build a coalition of people who are willing to stand up, who are willing to write letters to their elected officials and make calls.
I think the big point we want to focus on is it’s a good start. From the people we had give their e-mail addresses, we essentially figured about 1,500 people. From that, we’re going to try to build a broader coalition.
These days, I think the reason people don’t get involved is, one, they don’t feel officials are listening, but, two, it’s hard. It’s a lot of work to research these bills, see what’s before the state or federal government. So what I’m going to try to do is get out and do all that background for them. Once we get this coalition together, give them the e-mails. Tell them, “This is before the state Legislature. This is before the federal government. You might want to know about it.” And if they’re interested, pass it along and make it easy for them to contact their legislators. Make it easy as possible for them to stay involved.
Attention Congressman Kagen and those who believe in continuing to lead this country down it’s current path: another Tea Party is in the works!
Yeah, there’s actually been a big call for another one here in the Appleton area. So tentatively, we’re looking at on or before July 4. They’re doing some more nationally around that time as well. So we’re looking to build off this one.
And more than Tea Parties is in the works.
We’ve already created a Facebook group and we’re on Twitter. We’re going to start building off this, getting together some smaller groups to talk about issues and talk about what’s next and how to move forward. There’s going to be more organization. The first event was trying to get all these people all in one place and then, from there, we can go to building some more organization.
Rebutting the misconception being painted by the MSM and others on the left that the Tea Party movement is bashing only President Obama. And that they are right-wing funded.
I think that’s the way some people are trying to paint this movement and, honestly, I can only speak for our event. We were strictly nonpartisan. There were five or six speakers and every single one of them mentioned both parties as the problem. That’s not always the way it comes out. We can’t have control over every single person in the crowd. There were some anti-Obama signs and things like that. Well, that’s the nature of it. He’s the top guy right now. But when I was talking alone, I mentioned the fact that this was both a Republican problem and a Democratic problem, and a Washington problem. It’s not just one party or the other. Both parties have been in control the last couple of years. Both parties have screwed this up.
So at any opportunity that I have to talk about this with the groups that we’re organizing, I tell people it is a nonpartisan thing. Everybody should feel welcome here. If you’re concerned about the spending, if you’re concerned about your kids’ future and what it’s going to hold for them, these are groups for you. Whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican or an independent, we’re all there for the same reason.
It is a struggle getting that out there because there is a perception that these Tea Parties are funded by right-wing groups. If they are, I never got the check (laughs). What little we did have to pay for it came out of my own pocket.
And just to re-iterate the point for those that continue to miss it. The Appleton Tea Party was a NON-PARTISAN event.
That was my main goal in this whole thing, to make it nonpartisan. I told people when I asked them to talk that that’s the way it was going to be. I didn’t want anybody getting up there, saying, “Democrats are evil, Republicans are great and we should all vote Republican.” That’s not the way we wanted to do it. It was strictly about the policies and the issues. I think we accomplished it.
There was one comment from one of the speakers that was pulled out from the speech that made it look bad. But overall, every other speech, and even that speaker, took both parties to task for their failures.
Nice to see that the local Appleton paper decided to do a follow-up and not just ignore the Tea Party.
