Hope Is Not Lost

By Dave Jones, Macomb Daily Special Writer

MEDEFCO might just look like a collection of letters to some, but to many like-minded people it is a glimmer of hope.

It was less than one year ago that Bill Hollister — "Wild Bill" to those who know him — attended a Tea Party event. He walked away inspired.

Tuesday night, the passion continued when the group met at Barrister Gardens in St. Clair Shores.

He said he had been outraged for a while at what he had learned and had been seeing from his government. It was then that he decided to act.

"We're trying to educate what constitutional principles are," Hollister said. "And how our government in all levels has veered far away from those principles and that's basically how the government has gotten into the mess that it's in today."

And with that was born MEDEFCO (Metro Detroit Freedom Coalition), a Tea Party group — formed along with countless other groups around the country — a grass-roots level campaign to resurrect

and revitalize the ideals set forth by the Constitution of the United States.

In the views of Hollister and dozens of others in attendance at MEDEFCO's monthly meetings, those ideals have been lost.

It was April 15, 2009, that Tea Party groups first formed and staged events — various protests and letter writing campaigns, among other things — as a way to influence policy and government actions. Their intent is to keep the power in the hands of the people and the taxpayers instead of a powerful centralized government.

And now — with MEDEFCO — the spirit of those first groups has made its way into Macomb County.

"We're about preserving the Constitution," said Ken Matiyow, a member of the MEDEFCO Board of Directors. "We're here to protect individual liberties and we're for candidates who stand for the Constitutional guarantees we're all entitled to.

"And it's really important," Matiyow said. "Because many people don't understand what a Constitution is really for."

Beginning with eight people seated around a restaurant table, the group's numbers have grown to as many as 200 with the potential to fill banquet halls and influence the policy they desperately seek to change.

Michigan Senate Majority Leader and Attorney General candidate Mike Bishop said the state budget was passed without a tax increase because of the efforts of groups like MEDEFCO.

"If you had not made your voices heard," Bishop said as the keynote speaker at the meeting Tuesday night, "we would have not passed that budget — this year, too. It's so important that you continue — democracy is only as good as the people who participate. Continue to participate."

Bishop wholeheartedly endorses the Tea Party groups and their beliefs and ideals, saying that he feels connected to them all.

"This group is interested in getting involved," he said. "And it's my responsibility as a representative of the government to make sure I talk to them and encourage them to get involved."

Bishop said that without involvement from Tea Party groups such as MEDEFCO, the government will continue to run without hearing the voice of the people.

"There's got to be a connection at some point in time," he said. "And I want to be here to make that connection."

Since the regime change in the last presidential election, Tea Party groups — named in honor of those who protested British rule in 1773 by dumping British-made tea into Boston Harbor— say they have felt disconnected from the government. They feel that decisions and policies were being made without their best interests in mind. The government's move to a national health care system was seen as a unifying cause.

"There are some entities out there that want to take this country away from us," Hollister said. "But this country does belong to us."