Press Release

This is the press release for the event, tailor made for the Bratislava, please feel free to edit it as you please, translate it as you please, and circulate it as you please. Thank you. - Allan

For Immediate Release

RON PAUL MOVEMENT SPREADS THROUGHOUT EUROPE

Americans in Europe for Ron Paul, a Bratislava-based organization, and Europeans for Ron Paul, a Munich-based organization, will be hosting “The Strasbourg Tea Party” Saturday and Sunday, December 15-16, 2007 in Strasbourg, France.

The purpose of the event will be for leaders and members of the European-wide network of Ron Paul groups to network and to organize for the future of the European movement in support of the ideas of US presidential candidate Ron Paul.

“We are expecting larger crowds than we first thought,” said Allan Stevo, co-founder of Americans in Europe for Ron Paul, “we even needed to upgrade to a larger meeting facility in the last weeks before the event.”

The Strasbourg Tea Party will be part of an extensive international grassroots effort in celebration of the Boston Tea Party of 1773 in which American colonists dropped tea into the Boston harbor as a protest against excessive taxation.

“We raised $4.3 million at the last event, I think we’ll double it at this one,” said an American supporter of Ron Paul in Bratislava.

Ron Paul is a physician and a 10-term Congressman from Texas whose beliefs are heavily based in the US Constitution and the Austrian School of Economics. He has never voted for a tax increase, he has never voted to increase the power of the president. He is the only major candidate to oppose extending the war in Iraq. His is the only presidential candidate with an international network of grassroots supporters. He is the champion of the Constitution. Congressional Quarterly has consistently selected him among their most influential congressmen. GQ magazine selected Ron Paul for their 2007 issue of “Man of the Year,” the only US presidential candidate to receive this distinction.

Ron Paul’s campaign was the first to post real time fundraising results online (see: RonPaul2008.com) and has shown greater success in fundraising from individuals than any other US presidential candidate.

“This is truly a grassroots movement,” comments Americans in Europe for Ron Paul co-founder Ben Novak. “The efficiently-run campaign focuses on taking care of necessary matters and everything from fundraising to letter-writing is effectively handled by locally organized groups of volunteers.”

On November 5, a group of volunteers unaffiliated with the campaign raised $4.3 million with an average donation/person of a little over $100.

“There has never been a political movement like this,” says Americans in Europe for Ron Paul co-founder Allan Stevo, “the media refuses to take notice of this man, so tens of thousands of people throughout the US and the world, get on the internet and talk about him, he is an un-elected US president yet there is a movement throughout the world in favor of him. This is the first time an un-elected US president has had this kind of international support.”

In the last few days, a journalist at the strongly neo-conservative National Review, John Derbyshire, broke ranks with the magazine and came out in support of Ron Paul. “This is a crack in the dyke,” said Novak, “we are going to start seeing others from the neo-conservative movement coming out in support of Ron Paul as well.”

Even old-guard, Republican party organized straw polls show Ron Paul to be above the competition. Media organized phone polls generally show him to be behind the competition. The anti-Paul Fox News runs regular call-in polls after debates that almost always show Paul with overwhelming support among viewers, to which Fox political pundits respond in distaste. “But it is clear that someone out there is supporting him, and the traditional methods of finding who those people are just don’t seem to be working. Come January, we will see if our man has a chance to be President of the US, and we will see if Americans will take their country back from the special interest groups that control it.” said Stevo.

The first round of the elections will take place beginning January 3, 2008 in Iowa and will last until June, 2008. Traditionally, very few voters appear for the first round of elections, and for that reason those candidates with the most dedicated supporters have considerable advantages is these early days.

As the Iowa Caucus nears, groups of Ron Paul supporters from all over the world, including here in Bratislava, have participated in an unprecedented grassroots movement to send letters to all 700,000 Iowa “no party” voters. "We are targeting to send nearly 1,000,000 personal letters to voters in early primary states, and have already sent nearly 500,000 to Iowa alone." comments Ron Shimshock, an organizer of the letter writing campaign from Austin, Texas.

“If you believe that it’s the mainstream media that decides how a nation votes, then you would never expect Paul in office, but if you believe the people can think for themselves, I think you’ll start wanting to pay attention to Ron Paul, because despite the mainstream media blackout of Paul, his campaign, in several areas of measurement, has been growing exponentially since July ’07” said Stevo.

Americans in Europe for Ron Paul hosts regular Wednesday night meetings at Next Apache, Panenska 28, Bratislava. More information can be found at http://americansineuropeforronpaul.blogspot.com/ or http://ronpaul.meetup.com/583/ . Most active members of the group are Slovak, Austrian, American, and Czech and the group hosts regular meetings in Vienna and Brno in addition to Bratislava. For more information on the Strasbourg Tea Party, please see http://strasbourgteaparty07.blogspot.com/

More information can be found by contacting: AmericansInEuropeForRonPaul@gmail.com