Nanjemoy developer and activist Cornell Posey is now officially president of the Bucket Tea Party, and Robert Taylor of Washington, D.C., his business partner, is vice president, after the movement held its first meeting Thursday night.

The pair, who are seeking to build a duplex housing complex on 25 acres of land Posey owns in Nanjemoy, launched the movement to seek housing and other help for poor people at a Charles County commissioners’ meeting in June. In July, the commissioners rejected a zoning text amendment required for the duplex project, but Posey and his followers vowed in a boisterous public forum afterward to continue the struggle.

About a dozen people gathered at Sartik’s in La Plata for the Oct. 6 meeting to iron out the group’s leadership structure and plan future events. Posey exhorted attendees to go to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in the District on Sunday and said trips to meet with other groups in North and South Carolina are in the making.

Ariana Hatton of Grayton expressed gratitude to the Bucket Tea Party and the Western Charles County Community Association for raising the money to move her family into a new trailer.

“I pretty much had eight days to leave out of my boyfriend’s mother’s home. Cornell’s been keeping in contact with me and found me a trailer. … It took some time, but everybody worked together and got it done. I now have my trailer that WCCCA and Cornell has purchased for me,” Hatton said, eliciting applause.

The group’s activities are only beginning, Posey promised.

“We will be going to Capitol Hill. We will be going to Annapolis. And that’s right in the area, and Annapolis is but an hour away, so it’s very important for us to get the people out, especially [in] Annapolis,” Posey said. “I want five buses going to Capitol Hill. We will be on TV if we go to Capitol Hill in D.C. Hopefully, my goal is to have 500 people. If we can have 500 people when we go to Capitol Hill, that’s going to make a move. That’s going to put us on the map. It’s very important.”

He has filed paperwork to create both a nonprofit organization and a political action committee in the Bucket Tea Party’s name, he said, the former for charitable work and the latter for political activism.

The fundraising success of the national tea party should inspire the Bucket Tea Party to do the same, he said.

“We can do the same. It’s very important to get out the community, the middle class and poor people. Everybody knows somebody in the community who needs help. We need your voice to get political power,” Posey said.

Keissa Keys of Marbury is looking to the group to finance repairs to windows, doors and plumbing at her home, she said. She said Nanjemoy deserves help and a good reputation.

“They shouldn’t always think Nanjemoy is a bad place. Yeah, there’s people who need help. … Stop making them look bad. Everyone down there is not bad. There’s people down there that work and still need help,” Keys said.

Jerry Johnson and Lawrence Carter, both of Nanjemoy, said they attended the meeting because they want to see Nanjemoy develop again.

“There’s a whole lot of kids down here and kids are the future,” Carter said, and Nanjemoy is “not really” a good place for them to grow up. “They don’t have nowhere to go. There’s no community center, there’s no activities. There’s no stores, there’s no Laundromat, there’s no gas station.”

“There could be a lot of money made down there. For real, I think so,” Johnson said. “If I had a little bit of money that’s what I’d invest in: a gas station and a Laundromat, number one and number two.”

Johnson said he thinks the Bucket Tea Party is raising the public profile of his town.

“You got to make a start somewhere,” he said.

emitrano@somdnews.com