After 7 years of being naive and believing in my peers in liberty, I have seen the death of liberty and it’s right in my own playground –that being the place where my friends and I once played at spreading the message of liberty.
Liberty died with Ron Paul. I’ll say that again –I watched it grow with Ron Paul and I watched it die with Ron Paul. I know this to be true because all of the people whom I have met in the last 7 years through the Ron Paul Revolution can now be seen dying on a vine like the fungus that my winter squash had this summer. It looked kind of pretty for awhile and I believed that I would actually be eating squash this winter but what started with a bang ended as death on the vine and I was unsure of whether to blame it on what was falling down from the sky or coming up from the soil. The fungus of liberty seems to be the internet and where it started out there growing pretty and strong…..it apparently grew a fungus and died.
Who really cares anyway?
I started out in this world of “liberty” at the very front of the gate by immediately starting a Ron Paul meetup on Long Island –it eventually ended in 2012 with a lot of division, anger, and wrath with friends going their separate ways –some went RepubliCan, some went Losertarian and some just went back to the mall.
Through the years I have kept my positive attitude (naivety) believing that I could personally bring Liberty to this country, to my state to my locality by starting up organizations like
LibertyCandidates –helping those, like me, who still believed we could work through the system, get some notoriety and run for office believing that perhaps, they too, could get donations like Ron Paul and in no time at all we would have 50 Ron Paul’s in the House and Senate voting NO! to all the bad policies while repealing bad legislation….. but that didn’t work out. –No one has donated to LibertyCandidates for 4 years except for the few diehard believers like me. And the one guy in the liberty movement who actually had money to back up his beliefs gave it to a candidate by the name of Kerry Bentivolio who duped liberty by actually gaining the “notoriety” by being the first seated legislator to ever be
voted out of Liberty Candidates because in his first few congressional votes he voted for the Monsanto Protection act and to raise the debt ceiling. I’m still running liberty candidates but it’s sort of turned into a sparkler on the fourth of July rather than a
cherry bomb –pun intended, as our main way of collecting donations for those who actually had the balls to step up and run for office are called
money bombs. Bombs away –none of these brave souls stands a chance of ever winning a local seat never mind an actual seat in the house when the most they can garner in donations is a couple of hundred –how is liberty ever going to win that way? Either Ron Paul made all of his supporters broke or people just stopped actually caring.
I kept my positive attitude when I, along with my friend, Ed Weaver, began
Save Long Island because we saw that the meetup we were running, Campaign for Liberty, was another loss on the vine of liberty. In the years in which we tried to grow the liberty movement in our own back yards we never grew in numbers –and though we had 200 or so members the same 20 always showed up. We realized we were never getting anywhere except to maybe throw a sign wave on a bitter cold day but other than this…..we were going nowhere fast. That also was the time of the great divide between those who went “right” and those who went lost -and I say this, not so much to insult the big
L Libertarian party –because I have also put my faith and hope into this endeavor as well –dragging my Ron Paul friends into the party –believing we could get candidates to run for office locally and bring liberty to our own backyards –but that can’t happen when you can’t even gather more than 5 to 10 people –and not at any one time either– to collect the gazillion signatures a Libertarian needs in order to get on the ballot –and when one finally does it comes with a lot of bad blood and division within the party itself because of the clash of either egos or, like the saying goes, herding cats gets you nowhere….. yes, that is what the Libertarian Party means to me at this point –and I put all my faith and hope into this party believing that with my passion I could change things in a party that never really got anywhere on an island that has it’s own two party system betraying itself as happened this past year when the
Republicans on Long Island voted for the NY Safe Act infringing on the 2nd Amendment.
The Libertarian Party –especially in NY, has a chance in 2014 to grow and become a guiding beacon of light -they are the only party that stands up for the 2nd Amendment! But that’s not going to happen when the old guard libertarians who sat around drinking coffee and talking philosophy can’t get along with the new libertarians who came in from the Ron Paul Revolution and instead of talking philosophy –they are instead spiting one another and it’s more spit and vinegar than actually “getting things done”. The Libertarians in New York could be getting behind an event like the
Save Long Island Forum and letting the world know that they are here to educate the masses about the issues that affect all of us –but instead they revile, ignore and buy no tickets to this event….. ?
Because of that act of voting for the SAFE ACT by the Republicans I quickly jumped to my usual optimistic and idealistic self and decided I would actually
run for office and help to bring truth and light to the people of Long Island by awakening them to the issues affecting all of us –things like the reason why our taxes were so high and we could barely afford to fill our gas tanks and the reason why so many around us were getting sick and why our children were dying (including my own) from our government waking up one day in bed with
corporations who were now running our schools and our medicine cabinets and our skies and our electrical currents and our food supply….
So I had this bright idea along with my friend, Edward Weaver, who runs this organization we started called Save Long Island where we showed films about these same issues listed above on a monthly basis at the local library –trying to enlighten people to what we need to face and try to find solutions….. that we would bring in experts on all of these issues affecting us and try and awaken the people of our home, Long Island, to what’s really going on because we know that unless we educate ourselves about these issues, we can’t really fight back. We figured that this event would be a model for other towns and other cities across the nation –Save ______’s in every state. We had watched in the last year as people were devastated by the super-storm Sandy and we had seen what it could possibly be like if we really needed to survive for long periods of time without food or electricity or heat –and what it was like to come back from disaster, working together as a community. We figured now was the time to finally come together and take back our counties, our cities our towns, our state and that everyone would WANT to come on this journey with us! We would help to educate our neighbors and friends and some of us might even step up and take the bull by the horns and run for office or start leading people and teaching them to be self-sufficient by growing their own gardens or canning or stocking up. By fighting the companies trying to put “smart meters” on our homes without our knowledge. To gather the troops and fight the legislators that were working against us by trying so hard to trample on our constitution and taking away our rights for everything from our freedom of speech to our freedom to bear arms to our freedom to even decide whether our own kids should get vaccines or not! During this time we watched as groups grew on facebook on Long Island that were starting to wake up to the things we were telling them about for years like Agenda 21 and Common Core Education and Ed and I got excited that if we threw this event that they would all come and bring their family and friends so that we could all work together as a unit of educated, concerned citizens who knew our rights and knew what it would take to retaliate against the crony capitalist and legislators who fought against term limits so they could keep their cushy jobs while they boxed their ears when we had concerns –while pandering to corporations for lobby money and perks…. Yes…Ed and I had this grand idea that we would take our little organization and turn it into a giant extravaganza that would talk about ALL the issues while at the same time bringing about education about
economics which we have always known was at the center of this giant mess of a nation since 1913 when the Federal Reserve was born –100 years ago this week. And here we are throwing this large party to celebrate the fact that we CAN take matters into our own hands and educate ourselves and our families and friends and that by doing this we can come up with solutions and fight back….. only it’s all quiet and silent and no one is answering our call. We’re throwing a party and no one is coming but for a few optimist like us……but the rest? Our Libertarian friends, our Ron Paul friends, our friends in liberty and freedom…… where are they?
So I have to assume from all of this that liberty is dead. I had heard that the prices of our tickets were too high –yet we have been selling them for 6 months ? So we lowered the prices because we still believe that we are doing the right thing –only we realize that any profit we expected to bring in and hand over to
9/11 first responders was asking too much — and at half price the silence is deadening still….. and the sadness to the first responders will be even sadder.
We appealed to those who have known of liberty for longer than most to
please come and help us to awaken those who are just learning….. and I hear complaints from people on the left of the middle saying that this event sounds great but the tickets should be free and they plan on boycotting outside of our event because we’re charging money….. And my answer to that is “If only the
hotel wasn’t charging us $13,000 and our
speakers weren’t asking for a fee and plane fare and hotel rooms were free— but they are not…..
And to those who really know Ed and I –we’ve never charged a thing or made any money off of what we have done for years and years….. we do it because we give a damn –but giving a damn is apparently not enough –you need to give your soul to some people.
Yes, Edward Weaver and I are doing this because we care. Alexa Dunetz who came on board with us is doing this because she believes. A few who began with us in the beginning weren’t as naive and didn’t believe that this event could happen so they stepped off this train wreck. But we still believed and we followed through…. and here we are three weeks away and we have barely sold enough tickets to fill the South Huntington Library, never mind a room that can fit up to 10 times that amount. Here we are three weeks away and people are still putting this off until tomorrow as if that is possible for us when we have speakers to fly in from far off places to speak to you about what they have known and what they wish to share and how we can come together to find solutions….
But apparently liberty is dead with the very people I began this journey with –those from surrounding states like New Jersey, Connecticut, Virginia, Massachusetts, DC and of all places, New Hampshire -where those “enlightened” have begun the
“Free State Project” hoping that 20,000 will follow them to their land of the free…..yet not one ticket sold to one of them to come to a place where people are paying the highest taxes in this country, who have just been devastated by a storm and who are finding out slowly but surely that their
flood insurance might jump fivefold might actually like to find out about a place where there is some hope….. nope, none of those people have bought a ticket…. None of the people from the places I’ve traveled to with my husband for the past 7 years to help them to spread the message of liberty with everything from Ending the Fed to LoveFests and FreedomFests and Paloozas have bought a ticket….. none.
But liberty is not just dead on Long Island…..it is apparently dead in the midwest and in Alabama and in NYC and in all of the places where other liberty events have died on the vine — liberty died at Paulfest last August when the liberty movement divided between the grassroots and the RepubliCans which we found printed on a T-Shirt washed of it’s liberty….
So why am I still here believing? Running for Office? Running an event that no one is buying tickets to??
Honestly, I do not know…… If people can’t buy tickets to an event to learn what’s affecting their children and family —their neighborhoods and bank accounts and why so many people have cancer or are suffering from allergies or sick from medication or why their kids are being tortured in their schools day after day…. but can instead spend it on the new XBox or a few White Russians or a burger and fries and a beer –or pay $50 for a night out at the movies supporting stars they revile all day on facebook yet find that same price too high to listen to 20 speakers on 20 issues that will give them the knowledge to fight back for their own children??
No, wait, I do know why I’m still here….because I give a damn. But are we it? Are Ed and Alexa and I the last three people we know who will sacrifice thousands of hours planning an event to bring awareness to the masses while between the three of us we are still trying to earn a living, go to law school and run for office all the while running organizations to help other’s do the same? Ed is also the Chair of the Suffolk County Libertarian Party and I am a Vice Chair to the NY State Libertarian Party and run an organization that vets people to run for office on a platform of liberty. I’m starting to wonder if we are the last few people who actually are so naive we believed our friends and our family in liberty would come together to open their arms to a whole new crop of people that are just becoming aware themselves —because YES FOLKS…the few who have actually bought tickets are NEW PEOPLE who actually want to learn!
So what happened to our friends in Liberty? They’re divided, fighting, hating, condemning, judging and blocking. People who once inspired and who even won liberty inspiration awards are turning into angry egotist. Those who have entertained and sang of freedom and liberty are having a hard time finding places where people can hear them because liberty events are dying all over. So is it all over? Should we bother anymore? Should we just hang up our liberty T-shirts on a hook and never look back and just accept what’s thrown at us? Should I bother running for office? If people can’t pay $60 bucks to go to an event I’m throwing to awaken them to the issues that affect us are they going to donate to my campaign so that I can awaken them to the issues that affect us? Will they instead just go into the voting booths and vote party line once again after all of their complaining about the state of our nation?
Is anyone going to buy a ticket to listen to Charlotte Iserbyt talk to us about Common Core Education and what we should do to solve this massive problem or G. Edward Griffin tell us about Agenda 21 and what we can do to stop this infringement on our personal property rights? Is it too much trouble to be in a room and listen to men speak of our monetary policy and where we should go? Does anyone care any longer about how we can help our children stay off of anti-depressants or how we can cure cancer ourselves? Does anyone want to know what’s actually in our water and in our food and in our skies and how we can fight back from what’s being fed to our families?
hello hello hello is there anybody out there? Ed and I are seriously considering walking away from everything at this point. Do we bother? Is there any hope? We can’t back out of this event now because we have contracted to have it so we will probably end up being $30,000 in debt instead of helping our fellowman to become enlightened and fight back….Won’t you please think about continuing to spread the message of liberty and sharing your knowledge with some of those who aren’t yet where you might be?
www.savelongislandforum.com
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