Announcements

The next meeting of the Chicago Tea Party will be held on Wednesday, December 1 at 7:00 PM at Blackie’s, 755 S. Clark. (Or sign-up through Facebook.)

I am going to this meeting. I have never been to a Tea Party meeting, so far, for some reason. I recently exchanged emails with Steve Stevlic, Director, Tea Party Patriots Chicago. I look forward to meeting him.

Perhaps some of our ChicagoBoyz readers will be there as well.

UPDATE: Note this is a monthly event, occurring the first Wednesday of every month.

The featured speaker will be Adam Andrzejewski from For the Good of Illinois. Adam is promoting transparency in Illinois government through the Open the Books project. This is a strong added inducement to attend. Please look at the links to his organizations above, and see the good work he is continuing to do.

I supported Adam on this blog when he was running for the Republican nomination for governor. I had the pleasure of speaking to Adam recently, and I said, and I firmly believe, that had he been nominated, the energy and excitement that caused a GOP groundswell nationwide would have carried him to victory as well. Adam would have presented a real alternative. (As I also told him, he is the only person I have ever voted for, not counting Reagan in 1984, who I actually thought would do a good job, rather than simply voting against the Democrat.) Brady ran a lifeless and low-risk campaign, a typical idea-free Illinois Republican campaign, that was completely at odds with the spirit of 2010. He stumbled to defeat in a year where victory was there for the grasping, with the Republicans picking Obama’s old Senate seat and four Houses seats in Illinois. There are times when fortune really does favor the bold, and this year was one of them. As a result we in Illinois are stuck once again with the feckless and hopelessly wrongheaded Pat Quinn, while the state swirls down the drain, an Island of Blue in a Red Midwestern sea, a big, out of step, bankrupt state like New York or Calilfornia. Too bad.

As it happens, more or less by luck, I was at the first-ever Tea Party protest in Chicago on February 27, 2009 on Daley Plaza. My office at that time was across the street, and I walked over just to see what was going on. I recall it was very cold. The crowd was well-behaved, with a smattering of obvious psychos, as you inevitably find at any gathering on Daley Plaza. There were a lot of obviously home-made signs, some of which were clever. I also recall someone was talking (I think it was Dan Proft) and whoever the speaker was said the word “Repubican” and got an immediate, loud, angry BOO from many in the crowd. That was striking. The crowd seemed more anti-partisan than non-partisan, and certainly not pro-Republican. I said to myself: “hmmm, something new and interesting is astir in the land, a great and angry giant may at last be awakening” or prescient and prophetic words to that general effect. (You will have to take my word for it.) However, the movement that was getting started then has greatly exceeded my hopes and expectations, and I think we have still only seen the beginning of a historic mass movement.