The Rally for Real Change

By Audrey Pietrucha

It is always humbling to look back on the choices and decisions that have brought us to where we are now in our lives and, in a way, I guess I have to thank George Bush, Hank Paulsen and all those other “too big to fail” guys because they brought me to Montpelier and the “Rally for Real Change” on Saturday.

Three years ago in October I joined the Campaign for Liberty out of frustration with what was happening in Washington D.C. and on Wall Street. It was a presidential election year and Ron Paul was the only candidate addressing my concerns, which chiefly revolved around my three kids’ future and what little would be left of it after the politicians and the bankers got through mortgaging it. By this point Dr. Paul had dropped out of the race but the organization that had grown out of his run for the nomination, the Campaign for Liberty, was the only organization I knew of to join. What would become the Tea Party movement was just starting to simmer – Rick Santelli had not yet had the famous rant from which it would take its name - but I had to do something – anything! So I sent in my $30 and became Bennington County coordinator for the Vermont C4L.

Now, three-plus years later, I was in a room full of people I never would have had the privilege of knowing were it not for Ron Paul. Many of these people have become quite dear to me – it is amazing how a core belief in individual liberty and the necessary respect and esteem for our fellow citizen required by such a political philosophy can cut through superficial differences and help hearts hold on to one another.


On this particular Saturday we were there to further Dr. Ron Paul’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination and commit to real change, the kind of change that can only come when citizens become informed, committed, active and energetic. We were there to reach out to people of all political philosophies, personal persuasions and lifestyle choices. We were farmers and lawyers and housewives and entrepreneurs and musicians and computer geeks. We were from the Northeast Kingdom and the Banana Belt, the ski towns and the small towns. We were Vermont and we were there to try to take our state and our fellow Vermonters back to when we were strong and self-reliant, when we cherished independence and respected each other and ourselves.

Anti-progressive? No, the push against human progression was applied by those who sold our citizenry back into a form of serfdom in which we are all dependent on our governmental masters either for crumbs or permission to produce those crumbs. The call to change this degrading relationship was the first one issued as organizer Steven Howard opened the Rally for Real Change after a rousing round of politically-charged songs from the band Oneoverzero.

“We demand change and we are willing to work for it,” Howard said. As citizens of Vermont and the United States, he said, we can no longer accept the status quo and the two political parties which perpetuate it. We must demand accountability from elected officials, the media and the financial powers-that-be. Most of all, we must change the way our neighbors and friends look at political institutions. Too many accept the huge role government has come to play in their lives. We need to reach out to them, talk about liberty and how it sweetens and enriches our lives. We must convince them to search out and support the people who are talking about the changing the relationship between the people and their government. People like Ron Paul.

“There are no promises,” Howard said, “except that if we do nothing we won’t get the change we want.”

Speaker Jessica Bernier, founder of the Vermont Coalition for Food Sovereignty, reminded us that frugality and ruggedness are essential components of the true Vermont character.

“The Vermonter knows how to make do or do without,” Bernier said.

One thing Vermonters would like to do without, Bernier said, is the constant state of war the United States is in. She reminded the crowd that 18-year-old voters today have lived more than half their lives with their nation at war.

Bernier said issues of import to Vermonters have been taken over at the federal level even though people know better than government officials what is best for them. She called for returning authority to people and local institutions and urged us to use ideas to fight for liberty.

Dick Tracy of the Central Vermont Tea Party Coalition said the three core principles of his group are fiscal responsibility, limited constitutional government and support for free markets.  He illustrated the federal government’s inability to retrain its spending by pointing to our nation’s 15 trillion dollar debt.

“Fiscal Responsibility – we know it when we see it and we know when we don’t” Tracy said.

Tracy spoke of limiting government to the powers enumerated in the Constitution and pointed to the Federal Reserve as an example of the harm an extra-constitutional institution can do.

“Today the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar is five-percent what it was when the Fed was created,” Tracy pointed out. He said under those circumstances claims that the Federal Reserve is necessary to “control inflation” are laughable.

Tracy cited Ron Paul and his support for free markets, which he described as nothing more complicated than willing buyers and willing sellers. He expressed concern about healthcare legislation which ignores the economic reality that healthcare is a limited commodity and seeks to subvert market forces.

New Hampshire liberty activist Chris Lawless talked about the methods employed in New Hampshire to earn Ron Paul a second place finish in that state’s January primary and urged us to get off our computers and go out and talk to people in Vermont.

“You can’t let Romney get fifty percent,” Lawless said. He said Ron Paul needs to win a minimum of twenty percent of the votes cast March 6 in order to gain delegates and that translates into at least 8,000 votes. To reach that number, he said, we need to see through crude stereotypes, form coalitions of people from diverse backgrounds and viewpoints, find commonalities and reach out and get more people involved. Common sense, Lawless said, is our common ground.

“We are on the cusp of the next revolution,” He said. “We, the people, need to make the decisions to take back our towns, our states – take back what is ours.”

Civil Libertarian Maurice Kinney opened his remarks with a description of the gravesites in Maine where his Revolutionary War veteran ancestors lay. He said he has been aware since childhood that these men had risked their lives to give Americans the civil liberties they cherish.

Kinney then cited the USAPATRIOT act as a “systematic effort to deprive us of our civil liberties” and said Ron Paul was the only candidate talking about this dangerous law.

Kinney said Ron Paul’s support continues to grow as those of us who cherish liberty see there are many Americans who agree with us. Essentially, he said, there is strength and courage to be found in numbers and civil liberties are a natural point of consensus around which we can form coalitions.

Kinney also spoke out against the unconstitutional way by which the United States has entered wars for the last seven decades. He called the preemptive wars in which we now engage a waste of lives and resources that are counterproductive to their stated goal of keeping us safe. Today’s wars, Kinney said, are not national defense but offense.

Kinney said the liberty movement has arisen in recognition that we have problems which need to be faced and encouraged us to keep at it. Quoting Samuel Adams he said, “It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” He then urged us to be pyromaniacs for freedom.

Keynote speaker Robin Koerner, a blogger at the Huffington Post, publisher of WatchingAmerica.com and coiner of the phrase “Blue Republican,” converted to the Austrian economics viewpoint in his early thirties. He looked around the Vermont State legislative chamber at the more than 80 people in attendance and said “This is what a state capital looks like when it is actually filled with people who love liberty,” for which he received a resounding round of applause.

Koerner began his remarks with some instruction on winning arguments with those of different political ideologies. He said persuasive arguments need to start from our opponents’ points of view.

“Libertarians are good at talking to each other,” Koerner said. We’re not so good at persuading others to our positions, he said and that is something we need to work on.

Moving on to the current state of the nation, Koerner said Obama is Bush-plus and the only course for principled liberals and democrats is to support Ron Paul. He reeled off a list of abuses by the federal government, including corporations and lobbyists writing federal legislation, violations of the fourth amendment and due process laws, the National Defense Authorization Act and the lack of financial privacy. Some laws, he said, actually make it illegal to tell the truth. For instance, banks are required to file suspicious reports on their clients but cannot tell clients that the government is accessing their records, even if asked.                           

Koerner urged us to get past the old left-right animosity and see the synergy between movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party, who don’t even realize how much on which they agree. He said government overreach, not neglect, is the cause of the majority of our problems today. He also blamed fear-driven policies and politics.

“America is not a scared country,” said Koerner, a native of Great Britain who hopes to gain American citizenship within the next three years. Love, he said, is the opposite of fear and is at the core of the Ron Paul revolution.

“Ron Paul’s politics say to the nation ‘As you wish,’” he said. Put in place, he added, they have the potential to unleash a torrent human potential.

Koerner said we don’t ask those on the left to give up their principles but to look at the results of decades of top-down government interference in our lives and society.

“Have the goals of social justice and economic justice been reached?” he asked. Our friends on the left, he said, need to start separating the means from the ends. No taxes are high enough to solve our problems because we need to understand the source of our problems, not just treat the disease. He believed the root of our problem is that we have strayed from our nation’s, “sublime document,” the U.S. Constitution, which leans neither left nor right but toward human liberty.

So that's how I spent last Saturday - how was your weekend?