Geert Wilder's presentation, Warning to America, floored the audience. Baron Bodissey wrote about the event in an excellent article entitled, Tennessee the Model, and said:
The audience response to the speeches was uniformly positive and enthusiastic — Geert Wilders was interrupted by applause over and over again. One could tell that people had been desperate to hear these things actually spoken out loud. These were opinions which they had thought were forbidden, but which they now understood to be held in common with thousands of other Tennesseans. Mr. Wilders reminded them of their rights under the First Amendment — as he said, “here I can say what I want to say without having to fear that I will be dragged to court upon leaving this church.”
Bodissey is right: Tennessee is a model. "This strategy can be replicated all across Middle America," he wrote. "Lou Ann Zelenik (the executive director of TFC) told me several days later that she has received calls from pastors in other cities who want to do the same thing that TFC did in Nashville. So the model is already spreading virally, just as any good model should."
The entire event was professionally filmed. TFC is making a documentary of it, and has released several teasers, which you can view here, as well as a fifteen-minute video on YouTube of Bill Warner's talk, which you can view here.
How did this all come about? The event was staged and funded by the Tennessee Freedom Coalition, an organization begun by founding chairman, Andy Miller. "Our goals are important, yet very fundamental," said Miller. "In an age of social unrest and political turmoil, we want to bring truth to light by using the facts to educate citizens on the critical issues of our time...We will go where the truth leads us, and not be swayed by political correctness..."
In their first major event, TFC set the bar very high. Not only did a lot of people learn about Islam's prime directive, but the Signature Series inaugural event helped to further the education of several state legislators, who nine days later voted overwhelmingly to approve an anti-terrorism bill in a 26-3 landslide in Tennessee's Senate. The vote in the House was a few days earlier and passed 76-16.
Shortly after the Senate's vote, Andy Miller and his "Brother" Bjorn Larsen were dragged onto the Senate floor to receive a standing ovation in the Tennessee House of Representatives for his work on the bill and their joint efforts in making the events earlier in the week a possibility.
With Miller's leadership, TFC and other concerned Nashvillian's also helped to fund a video by Americans for Peace and Tolerance — a documentary exposing radical Islamist preachers in Nashville who had been accepted by the city leadership and the media as "moderates," but who were indoctrinating students at both Vanderbilt and Tennessee State University — as well as Nashville mosque members — with extremist, anti-American views. You can watch their first-rate 16 minute video on YouTube here: Losing Our Community.
Shortly after the Senate's vote, Andy Miller and his "Brother" Bjorn Larsen were dragged onto the Senate floor to receive a standing ovation in the Tennessee House of Representatives for his work on the bill and their joint efforts in making the events earlier in the week a possibility.
With Miller's leadership, TFC and other concerned Nashvillian's also helped to fund a video by Americans for Peace and Tolerance — a documentary exposing radical Islamist preachers in Nashville who had been accepted by the city leadership and the media as "moderates," but who were indoctrinating students at both Vanderbilt and Tennessee State University — as well as Nashville mosque members — with extremist, anti-American views. You can watch their first-rate 16 minute video on YouTube here: Losing Our Community.
This video had a large part to play in alerting legislators to what needed to be done.
Andy Miller is also on the board of the local ACT! for America chapter in Nashville, the largest ACT chapter in the United States.
TFC is a new organization. But in its short two-month existence, it has had a major impact on local Tennessee legislation, and has provided a model for effective grassroots activism all over the world.
Miller doesn't want to limit TFC's impact to Tennessee. "Our intention is to take this as far as it can go," he says. "Let's make it work in as many states and countries as we can." He says TFC wants to help other groups interested in staging similar events or doing similar legislation work. TFC's board members are willing to provide guidance and to share their experiences. Contact TFC by clicking here.
Andy Miller is a true Citizen Warrior Hero in every sense of the word. He and his organization will be leading us to the next stage of the counterjihad movement as it shifts toward the mainstream. I urge you to sign up for the TFC email updates, to "like" TFC on Facebook, and to follow TFC on Twitter. Let's all keep in touch with what this new powerhouse is going to do next, and assist in any way we can.
