Oath Keepers
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:
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:
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
