A few days ago I received a fundraising letter from JPFO signed by someone named Kasey Goodman, who is apparently the organization’s “senior operations manager.”
I am a lifetime member of JPFO, and prior to having been a writer for the organization, I was an ardent supporter of its mission as “America’s most aggressive defender of firearms ownership.”
I stopped writing for JPFO in October. This was in large part due to time constraints. I have a full time job, as well as a part time job, and coming up with a column every week was difficult, especially with all the business travel I do.
At the same time, I wanted to see what course my beloved organization would take under the leadership of the Second Amendment Foundation. I had been through the sale of a Second Amendment rights group to SAF previously when Founder and Executive Director Angel Shamaya sold KeepandBearArms.com to Alan Gottlieb. And while I continued working for KABA for a while after the sale, my last Army deployment ended my work there.
No one can deny that KABA is a mere shell of what it was under the dynamic, passionate leadership of Angel Shamaya. There’s no original content. A number of groups, organizations, and individuals are no longer allowed a voice through even a simple link on KABA’s Newslinks section. No featured author has written a piece for KABA in years. There’s no advocacy. There’s no KABA voice. It’s a gun rights news aggregator and little else, and it’s a damn shame.
I had hoped the same thing would not happen to JPFO. There were numerous writers who put their hearts and souls into the organization. We wrote passionately, boldly, and lovingly about our rights. We loved this organization. We loved Aaron Zelman and his vision. We were committed to providing original intense, impassioned content to help preserve our fundamental rights.
And now…
The Great Claire Wolfe left after exposing the backroom dealings of the sale of JPFO to SAF.
I left a couple of months after that.
Sheila Stokes-Begley and Brad Alpert also departed JPFO, and the beautiful, passionate, and eloquent Ilana Mercer is no longer part of that organization either.
Longtime gun rights activist and writer David Codrea is the most recent casualty of the slow transformation of JPFO into an empty husk.
I look at JPFO’s content, and see all the passion gone. Most of the writers have resigned. Its latest alerts run the gamut from links to Breitbart reporting to a badly written JPFO position note responding to a months-old letter from a European Rabbi. SAF ostensibly has the resources to at least redo the JPFO website, which was the bane of all of our existences! Loud colors, bad navigation and layout… they could have at least fixed that. But no…
This post is not about JPFO, however. It’s about the Zelman Partisans. We created this organization to carry on Aaron Zelman’s legacy, his vision, and his commitment. Every post you see on this site is original writing by such greats as Claire, Ilana, Sheila, and Y.B. ben Avraham. We censor no one. We are not afraid of criticism from other groups. We allow all points of view.
And we are dedicated to one single mission: to carry on Aaron Zelman’s vision of defending our natural rights.
This nascent effort is the heart of JPFO. We left because we knew and understood that JPFO would never be the same. And we created the Zelman Partisans as the only organization with the vision and the dedication to defend your rights – through the lens of Jewish history, so that atrocities against any people, be they Jewish, Christian, atheist, Pagan, black, brown, plaid, or striped, are never allowed to happen again.
This requires a certain amount of courage, and the Zelman Partisans have it.
No, we will not ban certain Second Amendment voices for personal or political reasons. As a matter of fact, we have done the opposite, and have issued an open invitation to Alan Gottlieb – the head of SAF – to post his views here.
Yes, we dedicate our efforts to this organization – to educate and disseminate the message about the threat to your rights.
Yes, we will carry on JPFO’s mission – Aaron Zelman’s mission – unaltered, untarnished, and with all our hearts and souls.
In the next few weeks, we will open a Zelman Partisans store, where you will be able to purchase all kinds of fantastic stuff designed by the very people who have created this organization. There will be memberships you can purchase, certificates you will receive, plus all kinds of merchandise that will make you proud to be a charter member of this organization.
While we set up shop, please do hit the “DONATE” button in the upper right portion of the site and give us some support!
We promise we will not let you down.
