GrassRoots Infighting

Today I ran across an article in Politico outlining an ongoing fight between Tea Party organizers.

"Documents filed in a lawsuit in a Georgia court against one of the founders of the Tea Party Patriots group by her former colleagues offers some glimpses at the origins of the populist conservative movement.

The lawsuit, which I mentioned earlier, against former National Coordinator Amy Kremer, who lives in Atlanta, is seeking to force her to stop using the group's name and to turn over control and passwords to e-mail lists, websites and social networking sites."

If you visit the person blog of Amy Kremer you get more information:

"As most of you are aware, at the end of September, the leadership of Tea Party Patriots (TPP) removed me from my leadership position within the organization.....TPP leadership has filed a frivolous lawsuit against me."

She goes on to make several well put points:

"Each of us knows that the grassroots movement is bigger than one organization. Of course, this grassroots movement will continue to grow and move forward whether or not TPP exists or whether or not other organizations exist. However, TPP cannot go on without the people of this movement. We all need to stand shoulder to shoulder within this movement to protect the movement and what we stand for as American Patriots."

"It truly saddens me that TPP leadership is expending an enormous amount of time and resources to pursue a frivolous lawsuit against me when this could have been resolved amicably, which I tried to do. Personally, I believe that the people of this movement would not want any time and money focused on a frivolous lawsuit, but would rather have these resources focused on fighting the socialist agenda of the current administration."

To hear about this is saddening.  It shows the destructiveness of power and its unseemly ability to break apart alliances, not because of differences in ideology, but out of control and recognition.  As a founder of this site, I can report that there are loads of "grass root" or "anti-obama" websites on the Internet that have taken a great deal of time and energy to build fences around their "turf".  They have lost sight of our purpose and have distorted our methodology for the sake of power and money.  If any movement is to succeed it is important that it has a gate that welcomes different view points and ideas, has a forum to discuss them, and has the humility to expand through inclusiveness.  We should not operate as a bunch of teams in a league all playing to see who wins a trophy, but as one team (with different skills) playing for a shared victory.  Unfortunately, it seems that which we are ultimatly trying to defeat has infitrated our ranks.