Welcome to Oath Keepers!
We are most honored to have you join us, and with your email, we now
consider you a member of Oath Keepers and a fellow guardian of the
Republic. We thank you for answering the call, and we very much
look forward to working with you to save our nation. See below for
what we expect from you as a member.
We are still constructing our more formal website which will be at www.oathkeepers.org, (the
blog will remain as it is) and once that is up and running, we may have a more
formal membership joining process, but you will be considered a member
regardless, and shall remain so until you tell us otherwise. If
you want to send us more complete info on you, such as name and phone number,
all the better. If you’re active duty, feel free to remain anonymous if you
prefer and just touch base to let us know how you’re spreading the word. If you
are active duty and insist on posting a testimonial with your name on it, as a
few have, then we will also add you to the membership list. It is your
choice.
If you do not wish to be considered a member, please email us and let us
know.
This is an association of active duty military, police, veterans, and fire
fighters (and other first responders) and our mission is to focus on such people
who took the oath, or who otherwise stand as guardians, and make sure they stand
firm. But we also accept those who never took the oath but who
support our mission of outreach to active duty personnel. So, even
for those of you who never took an oath, you are welcome as honorary members in
support of our mission. You do not have to be a veteran, police
officer, or active military to be a part of what we’re doing. You just have to
be determined to leave your children and grand-children a free country.
If you know anyone else who may be interested in joining us, please let them
know.
NOW THAT YOU ARE A MEMBER
One thing you will NEVER receive from us here at Oath Keepers is some horrid
form letter trying to scare you by describing all of the assaults on liberty but
then asking only for your money. We hate those!
Yes, we do accept donations and any donation you can give would be
tremendously appreciated and would help us greatly in our mission, but we will
ALWAYS ask you to do more than that – to actually get out there and help spread
the message. And even if you haven’t got a dime to spare you are
most welcome as a brother or sister, and we value your participation because the
success of this mission, the fate of our Republic, and whether our children and
grand-children will be free, depends on our conduct, not on how much
money we have. You can always give of your time, your intellect,
your passion, and your honor, and those are priceless.
What we expect you to do to help fulfill the
Oath Keepers’ mission (and note that most of this costs nothing, or
at most just a few dollars):
1.
Send in your own testimonial (if you have not done so
already). It is vital for others to read your powerful and
moving words of commitment (and they are ALL powerful and moving, trust us on
that!). There is strength and courage in knowing that others feel
as you do, so do not hide your light – your fire of liberty – under a bushel.
Share it with the world! Send in your testimonial, and we will
post it. We are backlogged somewhat at this time, but yours will
be posted, so please do send it in.
2.
Make a video tape of your testimonial! A picture is
worth a thousand words, and a short video of five minutes or so of you stating
your commitment to defend the Constitution is worth ten thousand words.
And such a testimonial by a veteran, and in particular combat vets, is
absolutely priceless. You can post it yourself on youtube and send
us the link, or if you need help and advice on getting it done, email us.
3.
Send emails to people you know, telling them about Oath Keepers
and our mission, and telling them about important Oath Keepers events, and
encouraging them to spread the word, especially to active duty military, police,
and veterans.
4.
Post online about Oath Keepers and our mission and events on chat
boards, news boards, etc. online.
5.
Visit the Oath Keepers blog often and comment on the
testimonials. The brave active duty and veterans who send in
testimonials deserve your thanks and support. It will mean so much
to them to hear from you, and it would be a shame for a testimonial from one of
those brave guardians of our Republic to go without thanks from you.
6.
Print up and pass out Oath Keepers materials, such as our
Declaration of Orders We Will NOT Obey, or our Principles We Defend.
Pass them out to your local police, fire fighters, and any military
personnel near you. Feel free to make up your own fliers,
brochures, business cards, etc. and pass them out. (just be sure to accurately
reflect our positions and to include our website address) We are
working on easy to print up versions you will be able to get off of our
site.
7.
Send letters to the editor of your local paper, telling readers
about Oath Keepers.
8.
Take out ads in your local paper, telling people about Oath
Keepers. You’d be surprised how cheap that can be.
One man we know took out a half page ad in his local paper for just
$12.00, telling his neighbors about Oath Keepers.
9.
Spread the word among any groups or associations you belong
to. There will always be veterans among them, and people with
relatives in the military and police.
10.
Form a local Oath Keepers meetup.com group. It’s easy to do, and is a
great way to meet others in your local area so you can get off the web and get
out there and meet each other face to face and work together to spread the word
about Oath Keepers in your community. We do think Meetup is the
best system, and we encourage you to use that mechanism. Go to www.meetup.com to get started,
and contact us if you need advice. Oath Keepers is not a top-down
org. We want it to be grass-roots and we want you to use your own
creativity and initiative. We only ask that you always keep in
mind you will be an ambassador for all Oath Keepers in all you do.
We do not tolerate racism, or incitement to violence. But
so long as you act with honor, integrity, good will, and sincere desire to
spread the message, you are invited to use your own initiative at the local
level. We will provide more details and suggestions on how to do
that in an upcoming email.
11.
Step up and volunteer to be a state-wide police, military, or veteran
liaison and coordinator. We are looking for a few good men
(and women) who can act in those capacities. We also seek liaison
officers for each of the major military branches. Email us at oathkeepersok@gmail.com
for details on how to apply. Police officers, please contact
national peace officer liaison Dave Freeman, Las Vegas Metro (retired), directly
at freeman777@cox.net. All
others, contact Stewart Rhodes at oathkeepersok@gmail.com or at stewart.rhodes@aya.yale.edu
12.
Join our Oath Keepers online forum and communicate with other Oath
Keepers to share ideas, thoughts, to give your support and encouragement, or
just to discuss topics related to the oath and our mission.
13.
JOIN US ON LEXINGTON GREEN, MASSACHUSETTS, ON APRIL 19,
2009 TO STAND WITH US AND RENEW YOUR OATH OR TAKE IT FOR THE FIRST
TIME. Details are on the blog.
14.
Join others for live events, Even if you cannot make
it to Lexington Green this year, you can still meet other Oath Keepers in your
local are on that special day to renew your oaths or to take it for the first
time.
15.
Send us your ideas on how to make our mission more successful.
We appreciate and respect your creativity. You may
think of something we would never think of, so please share your ideas.
16.
Soon we will have Oath Keepers patches, insignia, bumper stickers,
T-shirts, banners, pins, challenge coins, etc. The point of
those will be to help us all spread the message and to show your support for the
mission (and it will also be part psyops!) but none of that will ever replace
you putting in the time and adding your voice.
17.
Donate – what you can, when you can.
This effort does take funding, and your donations are vital in
supporting it. Oath Keepers is a lean, mean, oath spreading
machine, and we live by the credo “travel light, freeze at night” and always do
our best to make every dollar donated go a long, long way (and we have been very
fortunate to have incredible voluntary help, such as SWAT Magazine donating free
ad space, and the wonderful artist who has volunteered to design our insignia,
for free!). But donations are still needed to run this
effort. So, any amount you can spare will make a big difference.
Go here to donate.
18.
But, as we said above, it is your conduct that matters
most, and all the money in the world cannot replace boots on the ground, looking
others eye-to-eye, and you speaking, writing, and sharing this message with
passion and honor. The survival of our Republic, and whether
we shall be freemen or slaves, will depend on the conduct of our military and
police, and that may well depend on what you and the rest of us in this band of
brothers and sisters does. Our future is in our hands.
NOTE: while Oath Keepers is non-profit, in that we are certainly not in this
for the money, we will likely not seek tax deductible status because such comes
with too many strings and limits on free speech. We want to be
able to lobby freely against candidates and liberty stealing, constitution
violating legislation, and we want to be able to support candidates and bills
that defend the Constitution. We don’t expect to be too heavily
involved in any politics, but we want that option.
Links:
Oathkeepers' Forum
http://www.thementalmilitia.com/forums/index.php?board=60.0
Oathkeepers on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=68211783864
Oath Keepers on MySpace
http://www.myspace.com/oathkeepersok
Go here to find our list of orders we will not obey
(and then email it, print it up, pass it out, etc.):
Go here to find our Principles We are Sworn to Defend (also
email and print it up):
Go here for more info on the April 19, 2009 gathering on
Lexington Green:
Go here
to watch our videos:
Here is the article Worldnet Daily did on Oath Keepers:
Soldiers Pledge to Refuse Disarmament Demand
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91530
That article has been re-posted all over the web. Please
continue to spread it.
Go here to listen to Oath Keepers founder, Stewart Rhodes on the G. Gordon
Liddy show, on Wed. March 18 (pass it on to others):
http://feeds.radioamerica.org/podcast/GGL/audio/000003_008036.mp3
That is a great, short interview and would be great to send to
others.
Here are the videos of Stewart Rhodes on the Alex Jones show, Thursday
March 19. Yes, some of you may discount Alex Jones as a conspiracy theorist,
but the man certainly has been on top of many important developments the
mainstream press just won’t cover (he broke the MIAC Report story), and there is
no denying he is a patriot – and he has nearly 4 million listeners.
It was a powerful interview:
Part 1 of 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iWsz9zSI64
2 of 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifxrtRcjo48
3 of 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhItoECt3KQ
4 of 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBStRRMfZ94
If you know of a show you think we should be on, please feel free to send the
show any info from the site or to point them to any of the above media
appearances. Or email me (Stewart) directly at Stewart.Rhodes@aya.yale.edu.
Welcome! We are truly honored to have you among us as a
fellow Oath Keeper! Please send in your testimonial if you have
not yet done so, and please do join our forum and introduce yourself.
And feel free to repost your email and/or testimonial there as
well.
Together, we will defend our Constitution against all enemies, we will save
this Republic, and we will leave our children and grand-children free.
For the Republic!
Stewart Rhodes
Founder of Oath Keepers
PS –
For those who may have missed our first Oath Keepers update, here it is below
(with redundant or outdated info removed):
OLDER UPDATE
We are working feverishly to answer everyone’s emails individually, so if you
haven’t received an answer yet, please don’t think we’ve forgotten you. It’s
just that we have received hundreds and hundreds of emails. It’s fantastic to
see Oath Keepers take off like a rocket in this way, but it does make it hard to
keep up!
If you have sent in a testimonial either by email or in the comments and it
hasn’t been posted yet, rest assured it will be. But still, if more than a
week goes by and you don’t see yours up on the blog yet, please email us to make
sure we did not overlook it somehow.
Your testimonials are powerful and vital to the success of this effort.
These testimonials are all so moving that we have a tough times getting through
them to post without tearing up. If you heard me (Stewart) on the radio this
past week you heard my voice crack more than once during the reading of some
testimonials. There are some that are so moving I really just cannot read them
aloud.
We are hearing over and over again what an impact they are having, with many
people all over the web commenting on how moving the testimonials are and also
commenting on how it really got their attention and made them think to see such
serious, no bull men – many of them combat vets – expressing such serious
thoughts about the future of our nation. You are having a tremendous impact.
We now see some very, very serious discussions about the meaning of the oath and
when it is right to refuse orders, among current duty, vets, and cops, which is
exactly what we wanted to see happen.
Upcoming Projects
. We are working on many, many projects.
A professional emblem designer is donating his time (from Canada) to create
an emblem for a site banner, challenge coins, T-shirts etc.
Tribute video:
One upcoming project is a tribute video to veterans. This video will be set
to the haunting and stirring song “Minstrel Boy’ as sung by Joe Strummer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAdPtzS8reo&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Foath-keepers.blogspot.com%2F&feature=player_embedded
This will be to honor the men who, in their youth, many of them mere boys,
went to war and sacrificed so much, with many of them not returning, and others
returning wounded and scarred. The theme will be that these men gave so much
in the fight against fascism and communism, and we owe it to them to make sure
that their sacrifice was not in vain.
So, if you have photos of military and law enforcement family members (or of
yourself) when they we young, that you would like to see in the video
(particularly veterans of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam) please email them in.
If possible, include the name, unit, and years served, or their birth and
death dates. You can see an example of this in the site tribute (a picture of a
young Marine who went off to war at the age of 16). But even if you don’t know
all of that info, please send the photo along with whatever info you have.
If you send in pictures, then at least one photo of each vet you want to
honor will make it into the video. We may not be able to use them all, since
we want to make sure other vets get in, but we will certainly use all of them if
we can!
That will be a powerful, moving video.
Video of Active Duty and Vets Reading the Ten Orders We Will Not Obey:
This will be a very powerful and important part of out outreach effort! The
short video we have up now is actually a trailer and teaser for this longer ten
minute video. At the April 19, 2009 rally and elsewhere, we will
take short video clips of active duty military, police, and also veterans
reading off each of the ten orders we will not obey and we will splice them all
into a montage of faces and voices with each one of you who appear in the video
reading a short part of the declaration. We hope to get dozens or even a
hundred people in the video, young, old, black, white, brown, etc. from all
branches, and ranging from young active duty guys, old gunnies, officers, and
Vietnam vets. So, please make a video of yourself or another vet (and
especially the older vets, from WWII, Korea, and Vietnam) reading from the list
of ten orders and the full explanations. You can read all of one of the ten or
you can read them all – up to you. We would especially like to see active duty
read the first part of each of the ten, stating “we will NOT obey orders to
____” and then the rest can be read by vets, giving the history and the reasons
why.
If you are willing, please take a video camera to a gun show, to a VFW hall,
VA hospital, or other places where vets come together, and find the older combat
vets and show them the declaration of ten orders and ask them to read from them
while you film. Please ask their permission to use the footage in a video to be
sent all over.
If you don’t know how to email a video, you can send us a tape (email for a
snail mail address). If you have any questions, please email us.
Our new site along with message boards, FAQs and printable outreach materials
will be up soon but we will maintain the blog and all testimonials will continue
to be posted there.
Proofreading; Feel free to let us know if you see any typos. And
those who have offered to proofread don’t be surprised if you find your email
box filled with attachments soon.
Thanks everyone, together we will win back the hearts and minds of own
troops.
Stewart Rhodes
OATH KEEPERS SITE
DEDICATION
This site is dedicated to the memory of John William Adams
(1925-2006), Oath Keeper extraordinaire.
http://oath-keepers.blogspot.com/2009/03/this-site-is-dedicated-to-memory-of.html
After the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,
John Adams, then age 16, lied about his age to join the Marines so he could
fight those who had dared attack his country. His enlistment date was December
10, 1941, just three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor (see below).
As a Marine rifleman, he fought the Japanese from island to island, across the
pacific, including at Iwo Jima. We may have good men, but we never had
better.
John Adams was my father-in-law. Once my young son, always full of questions,
asked his Grandpa John "how many Japanese soldiers did you see go still in your
[rifle] sights, Grandpa?" (yes, my son talks like that) Grandpa John, who
usually was not at a loss for words, and never passed up an invitation to launch
into a good story, just looked away for a moment, in a thousand yard stare, and
then looking down at his grandson simply said "too many."
Until his death
in 2006, he was a dedicated patriot who still took his oath to defend the
Republic deadly serious.
May God grant you the courage to do
likewise.
Stewart Rhodes
