Fifty-three years on the wall.
It started at a kitchen table in 1973. It never stopped.
A handful of Florida women incorporated this organization in Ocala to fight for their families. Three generations later, the watch they began is still kept.
A project of Florida Eagle Forum, Inc. · Since 1973.
Who is Eagle Forum?
Founded
Over fifty years of conservative, pro-family leadership in America
Years Active
Still standing, still led by her family and successors
Defining Victory
Stopped ratification through grassroots organizing
The Founder
In 1972, Phyllis Schlafly founded Eagle Forum. She was a wife, a mother of six, a lawyer, and an author, and she became one of the most consequential grassroots organizers in American history.
The Fight
The fight that defined her was the Equal Rights Amendment. When she began, the ERA had passed Congress and looked certain to be ratified. Both parties backed it. The press assumed it was done. Schlafly disagreed, and she organized ordinary women, around their kitchen tables, to stop it. They won. The ERA was never ratified.
Eagle Forum Today
Out of that fight she built Eagle Forum: a national organization for conservative, pro-family men and women who wanted a real voice in public policy. More than fifty years later, it is still standing, still led by her family and her successors, and still doing the work she started. That is who we are the Florida chapter of.
Our Mission
The National Mission of Eagle Forum
To enable conservative and pro-family men and women to participate in the process of self-government and public policy making, so that America will continue to be a land of individual liberty, respect for family integrity, public and private virtue, and private enterprise.
The Mission of Florida Eagle Forum
We are Florida's oldest conservative policy organization, and we carry that national mission into this state the same way we have since 1973: we read the bills, we write the bills, and we stand watch over the Legislature so that Florida families keep the freedom, the faith, and the future that are rightfully theirs.
"We do not react to Florida law. We shape it."
Every session, we turn the founding principles into filed legislation, expert testimony, and briefings on all 160 legislative desks — so that in Florida, liberty, family, and faith are not just defended. They are written into the law.
Why Florida Eagle Forum was founded.
October 18
The day Florida women made it official — filing articles of incorporation in Ocala to stand watch over the Legislature.
1972 — ERA Passes Congress
The Equal Rights Amendment cleared Congress and went to the states for ratification, igniting a fierce battle across the country.
1973 — Florida Women Organize
A group of Florida women filed articles of incorporation in Ocala as Women for Responsible Legislation / Eagle Forum, Inc. — built to show up every session and hold the line.
1979 — ERA Defeated in Florida
After six years of testimony, bill-reading, and relentless presence at the Legislature, Florida did not ratify the ERA. The line held.
Today — Still Standing
That same 1973 corporation, now Florida Eagle Forum, Inc., is still registered, still active, and still fighting in Tallahassee. No conservative policy organization in this state is older.
Florida was one of the battlegrounds where the ERA lived or died — and Florida women were on the front line. They did not disband when that fight was won. They incorporated something built to last, and fifty-three years later, it still stands. You can read the original 1973 filing yourself.
The watch never ended.
For five decades, the mission passed from hand to hand — the women who stopped the ERA, the leaders who kept the chapters alive through the eighties and nineties, the volunteers who testified on parental rights and education long before those fights had names.
Read the bills.
Every session. Every committee. Every page that mattered.
Tell the truth about them.
No spin, no silence — plain language spoken into the record.
Stand on the wall.
Show up, hold the line, and refuse to leave the field.
Every generation of Florida Eagle Forum did the same three things.
Randy Osborne, President.
Approved unanimously by Eagle Forum's national Board of Directors, July 2022.
Churches Reached
Statewide faith-based grassroots network
Speaking Engagements
Churches, civic orgs, and grassroots groups
Terms as Marion County GOP Chairman
Elected party leadership
Coalition Organizations
Stop Common Core Coalition co-founder
Randy Osborne leads Florida Eagle Forum as a registered lobbyist and one of the state's most influential conservative organizers. He built one of the largest faith-based grassroots networks in Florida — reaching more than 1,200 churches across the state.
He served two terms as Chairman of the Marion County Republican Party, sat on the Marion County Regulatory Review Advisory Board, and was appointed by Governor Rick Scott to the state's Education Standards Task Force.
He founded the Florida Campaign School, which trains candidates running for office, and co-founded the Stop Common Core Coalition — an alliance of more than fifty state and national organizations.
He hosts the Worldview Truth podcast, with guests including Florida's sitting Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, and Speaker of the House. He is the author of In the Name of God: America's Rise of Antisemitism.
He lives in Ocala with his wife Ann — the city where Florida Eagle Forum was chartered in 1973.
"He came to the role the way the founders did — through the work, not around it."
Rebekah Ricks, Vice President.
Twenty years of policy work. Forty bills passed. Three campaigns authored.
Bills Passed
Across multiple states in parental rights, medical freedom, and child protection
Readers
Courage & Caffeine — policy and storytelling platform
Years in Education
Veteran educator and homeschool mother
Rebekah Ricks brings the legislative craft. In more than twenty years of policy work, she has helped pass over forty bills across multiple states — in parental rights, medical freedom, and child protection.
She authored the legislation behind all three of Florida Eagle Forum's current campaigns.
She is the founder of Courage & Caffeine, a policy and storytelling platform reaching more than 125,000 readers, president and co-founder of the Coalition of Mothers and the Alliance of Mothers, and co-founder of the Israel Advocacy Coalition.
A veteran of twenty-five years in education, she homeschools her two boys in Winter Haven, Florida.
"She homeschools her two boys at the kitchen table — the same kind of kitchen table where this organization began."
Together, they revived it.
Randy brings the reach
1,200 churches by Sunday.
Rebekah brings the drafting
A bill by Monday.
"Between them they have taken a fifty-three-year-old name and built it into what it is now — the oldest conservative policy organization in Florida, and the most prepared."
Same wall. Same watch. Same three jobs.
Stand with us.
Fifty-three years in, the watch is still kept by people who show up.
Become a Member
Join the oldest conservative policy organization in Florida.
Follow the Work
Stay informed on every bill we read, write, and fight.
Spread the Word
Bring Florida Eagle Forum to your church, your community, your network.
Our Story