Last week I went to an open event hosted by the Fort Bend County Tea Party at the La Madeline in the Sugar Land Town Center. Although the night featured an experienced guest speaker from Harris County giving a presentation on becoming a precinct chair, ultimately everyone in attendance received information on a wide variety of local rules and political topics.
Precinct chairs are extremely important because they not only represent the most local and down-to-earth level of party politics and get-out-the-vote efforts, but they also form the backbone and primary decision-making body of the political party in most Texas counties.
In many counties, the applications to become a precinct chair are due in a party chair's hands as early as the end of December. If you live in Fort Bend, you can find out what precinct you live in by checking the official maps found here.
Attendees also learned about the rules differences between counties and the political parties in neighboring counties, as well as the process of partisan conventions. People can run within a particular political party at the annual precinct convention to be a delegate to the next level (either county or state senate district), and from there to the state convention (and possibly the national convention after that).
During and especially after the main presentation, the individuals and couples in attendance started a round-table discussion on the importance of grass-root groups and why they were emerging so quickly and with such high turn-out in communities all across the country this year.
A number of people announced their intentions to power up issue-oriented grass-root movements of their own in Fort Bend County in addition to the Tea Party, such as a local chapter of a national political movement begun by a middle-aged mom in another state or the historically-minded One If By Land Society.
The evening wore on as many locals dove into a deep discussion regarding their concerns about the economy, federal spending and federal power, and the continued plummeting of the dollar.
What I found most interesting was that, although everyone in attendance came from very varied self-described political ideologies and backgrounds, virtually everyone agreed with one another that divisive social issues would have to be regulated to a particular sphere of debate so that more and more Americans could get united together behind grass-roots movements that sought to assert more local and state control on federal fiscal policy and the allocation of purse-strings.
Please bear in mind that today's posted story was just a generalized summary of the evening. For a more extensive analysis on the Tea Party movement, more details on important political changes and rules in Fort Bend County, and more thoughts on what YOU can do to become politically involved in your area, please read "Change You Can Participate In" by visiting my usual Web site at:
