Tour Journal

The tour so far…

The American Liberty Tour is just getting started and we’ve already had a fantastic six days!

As you can see, our crew is starting to upload videos and post blog updates. It took a little longer than expected because fast internet is hard to come by, but Nic Hall, Caleb Howe and Howard Galloway are on top of it and making things happen.

We’re currently in Salina, Kansas. Tonight the good folks in Salina are hosting us for a community liberty rally before we head out to Kansas City. This wasn’t a planned stop, so we were honored to be invited.

I’ll try and post more updates over the next day or two to talk about what happens in Kansas City, St Louis and Nashville.
But for now I want to chat a bit about the events we’ve had over the past six days. If I had any doubt about the authentic grassroots nature of the liberty movement (which I don’t), that doubt would have been easily erased after visiting the past three cities.

Ken and I started about two weeks ago with an American Liberty Alliance meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. We packed a room full of ALA members and began to strategize on our plans as an organization moving forward.

We then traveled up to Reno to meet with Howard Galloway, the guy producing and directing our documentary. In Reno we sat down in front of cameras and discussed our backgrounds, our organization, and our reasons for doing what we do.

After a few days of filming in Reno, we headed to Oakland to pick up the two Recreational Vehicles that our crew would spend five weeks in. The rest of our crew flew in to Oakland, including Ned Ryun and Austin James of American Majority.

On Thursday evening (September 10th), we had an evening meeting in Sacramento with a room full of activists. Many of these folks had just finished the activists/candidate training with American Majority, and they were ready to take what they had learned into their communities and get to work.

California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (Who is also running against Senator Barbera Boxer) spoke at the evening event and was well received. We also had Lew Uhler from the National Tax Limitation Committee and Eric from the Howard Jarvis organization come and said a few words.

While some in our movement may dismiss the value of a meeting such as this, those of us who consider ourselves community organizers within the liberty movement fully understand exactly what it is we’re doing here. And we’re encouraged to see a new movement taking form.

The training sessions in Sacramento were superb. I don’t know the exact number, but I believe there were about 60 there for the American Majority candidate /activist training.

Salt Lake City was… well… incredible.

On Saturday (9/12) we had about 2,300 present at the Utah State Capital for the Liberty Rally. The people braved the heat for several hours to hear the Liberty Tour crew speak. There were several members of Congress, state legislature and other elected offices. There were candidates, activists and liberty group leaders.

And most importantly, there were thousands of angry people looking for real political change.

There were about 50 folks in the Salt Lake City candidate/activists training later that afternoon. I met with several of the folks after the training session and heard very encouraging things. It sounds like folks are pumped, trained and ready to go.

We stopped in Loveland Colorado on Sunday evening. There we met with hundreds of freedom loving Colorado patriots. Again, like with Salt Lake City and Sacramento, these folks are every day Americans who are willing and now able to become extraordinary activists within the liberty movement.

American Majority hosted another training session in Denver yesterday. We’re hoping to post some footage of the trainings and rally speeches soon, so stay tuned for those and keep an eye on our Youtube channel.

We’re certainly helping fan a brushfire of freedom and there is no question that the movement, the true grassroots side of the movement, is growing and quickly becoming stronger.

I’m going to start posting more serious coverage of the tour moving forward, so check back often for my updates.

For Liberty,

-Eric Odom

September 15, 2009 | Tour Updates