Commander's
Column: A Confederate Summer
The heat of the summer found us
enjoying the Sesquicentennial and fellowship with compatriots at the Forrest
Birthday party at Fort Dixie in Selma and the 118th National Reunion in
Vicksburg. If you attended either of
these events, you surely were inspired by the programs and messages, that we
must continue the fight for preservation of our Confederate heritage. And now we are in the midst of our annual
Dixie Smoked-Butt camp fundraiser which provides the means for us to do our
part, contributing to historic flag and artifacts preservation at the Alabama
State Archives and the First White House, helping to renovate and set flags at
Confederate veteran’s cemeteries, and many more activities. These funds are critical for carrying on the
grassroots local effort which typifies the Sons of Confederate Veterans' operations
to answer the Charge, so I am excited that the latest report indicates we will
again set a record for proceeds from the sale.
The convention in Vicksburg
presented information about the Vision 2016 initiative which sets the goal for
growing membership by 20,000 and positions the SCV as the preeminent authority
for Confederate history and Southern heritage preservation. Vision 2016 is a
bottom-up grassroots effort where best practices for creating dynamic
initiatives and growing camps are shared across the organization instead of the
Executive Committee dictating ideas and plans.
A key to preserving cohesion and synergy and leveraging the strength of
our thousands of members is to utilize all means of communication to project
ideas from everyone through camp and Division newsletters, the Confederate Veteran magazine, email, the
myriad social media outlets, and cloud libraries on-line to share documents
like the Camp Handbook. An exciting
development at the convention was the change in name and mission from Heritage
Defense to Heritage Operations. This
signifies a change in direction from a reactionary posture to one where we
promote our Confederate heritage through education and carry our message to the
public and the fight to our critics.
The funds we generate through our
Dixie Butt Sale are important to answer the Charge. Initiatives to get our message out to our
communities include school initiatives like educational programs and JROTC
awards, scholarships, the aforementioned social media presence, advertisements
for our events and meetings, and parades, as well as membership in the local
Chamber of Commerce. But I have also
discovered that the simple act of asking coworkers and neighbors and family
whether they would like to purchase a Dixie Butt opens the door to
conversations regarding our mission, the SCV Charge, genealogy, camp meetings
and even membership. Thanks for all your hard work and generosity for making
the Dixie Butt fundraiser an unqualified success so that we can continue the
work of our camp and make our ancestors proud that we continue the fight for
Southern heritage. This is also the time
of the year for renewing our membership in this noble organization and of
course I would encourage everyone to do so and redouble your efforts to attract
new members to help achieve the Vision 2016 goals.
Stuart Waldo
Camp Commander
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