Meet Felicia Cravens, Tea Party organizer in Texas

Felicia Cravens is organizing April 15 Tea Party events in Houston, Texas.

Here’s our e-interview with Felicia.

(Click here to read yesterday’s interview with Laura Boatwright and here, to read our interview with Pam Fowler.)

Felicia is from Katy, Texas, a western suburb of Houston. She is a part-time drama teacher, and is married with two daughters, 9 and 19. Felicia’s 19-year-old helped her organize the February 27 Houston Tea Party and both children helped run it.

Do you have any advice for any other local organizers?

ASK FOR HELP! People want to be a part of the event! Don’t be shy and think you have to do it all yourself! If people know about the event, they will come to you!

Ever done any organizing before?

The largest organizational task I’ve ever taken on was chairing a PTA carnival.

Why are you doing this?

At stake here is nothing short of our liberty. People forget that economic freedom determines the fate of so many of our other freedoms. Pamphleteers (as well as bloggers!) need resources to propagate information and opinion. Gun owners need financial resources to obtain and maintain their firearms. Churches and non-profit organizations need access to donations to fulfill their missions. Take the plank of financial liberty out from under any of these other rights, and they can easily topple as well.

How are you getting the word out?

We purchased a website, captured and entered all the emails we received to send e-mails directly to our list, and we are blessed to have three local talk hosts on board with us, donating time, money, and air time to our cause. They talk about the event on their shows, help with planning and speaking, and even record promotional spots for us to advertise the event. We could NOT reach nearly as many people without them.

Anything easy about this?

Getting people to the rally was amazingly easy. The people we invited quickly spread the word to their networks of friends, and where we expected around 150, we saw 500! People who planned to attend also called in, on their own, to the local radio shows to talk about and promote the event.

What’s challenging?

The hardest thing has been keeping up with communication. We haven’t perfected the contact plan yet for future events. We’re better organized than we were for the first rally, but the e-mails keep coming in bunches every day. The sooner we get a contact management system in place, the better we’ll be able to keep in touch with our local forces.

Are you in this for the long haul?

I love this country and the principles from which it derived, and it grieves me to see it in danger of losing its historical character of a land of opportunity, hope and freedom. Many people are disheartened and don’t know what they can do. They’ve all but resigned themselves to waiting out the bad times.

My goal is to see people inspired to stand up and find out what they can do about the direction of the country. It will take a long time, longer than we will like. But if we persevere, if we refuse to accept the unacceptable, if we insist upon a return to sanity and accountability and personal responsibility in government, if we DON’T GIVE UP, we will prevail.

Wrap-up:

I’d sum up Felicia’s last answer as another well-known female Republican activist put it:

“You betcha.”