codex: involute stream of consciousness

Ooooh, powerful words there, sparky! Unfortunately, you're preachin' to the choir. Your rhetoric sounds reminicent of the line from those very Republicans when they were all in a lather about President Clinton's indescretions.

The only way you're going to beat all the Republicans is to attact their weak-minded, finacial elite-wannabe voting base, forget the hard-core PNAC types. To do that, you're gonna need ideas that illuminate the other side of the arguments made by the curent regime.

So, you got any good ideas how to wake those moderate sleep-walkers out of their stupor? How to shake those needing to be lead by the religious nose-ring? How make those who support the "small government" GOP ideal realize that the war and the so-called PATRIOT act have made the Federal government bigger than ever?

To make the chicken-hawks realize that the indefinite "War on Terrorism" is and will continue to be no more effective than the War on Drugs for the very same reason, that they seek to eliminate problems' symptoms, while ignoring or even exacerbating the causes, and making our own society less safe and humane in the process?

To kick the crutches of complescency out from under those that support a Medicaid "reform" that only benefits the private health care industry and pharmacos by doing nothing to contain costs and dooming the public sector solution to strangle?

To light a fire under the dolts that take advantage of government tax breaks to buy SUVs big enough to drive through the loophole in the CAFE standard, supported by a vice-president who negotiates public energy policy out of public view behind closed doors, with his revolving door lobbyist buddies?

Well, if you do, that's what we need to be talking about on this list. Exhorting US to "Vote Democrat" is a waste of all of our time. Its THEM that we need to reach.

Here is some feedback from the Ani DiFranco concert last Friday night (11/14) at the MidHudson Civic Center.

First let me clarify one apparent misunderstanding: This concert was a commercially-operated event arranged as part of the artist's regular touring schedule, and our participation in it was incidental and at the artist's pleasure. It should not be confused with the events that this group has and will arrange independantly as stand-alone events to benefir the Kucinich campaign. All of the proceeds from our effort, but not from the concert as a whole, went to the campaign. Volunteers are admitted free (and even get discounted parking!).

How it came to be:

I saw an item in the Kucinich campaign weekly newsletter about artists endorsing the candidate which mentioned Ani DiFranco. I looked up the artist's web site and found that she is on tour, and would have a stop on POK. This was about 2-3 weeks ago. I contacted the artist's management and made a format request in writing for participation. I requested the following items:

• Permission to "table" at the POK event, that is, to have a table in the lobby of the venue and admit a few people to serve at it.
  
• Provision of 2 prime tickets to be offered to the public for fund-raising purposes.
  
• Opportunity for a statement from the stage, by a campaign rep, the artist, or her designee.
  

After a significant wait, I got a response from the artist's management granting permission to table only. I had to make the arrangements with the promoter and the venue, this happened the day before.

I was not present at the last D4K meetup due to travel, but I understand volunteers were solicited. In the end, I had three volunteers show up, and that was sufficient to cover the event. I had met with folks from the CD 20 DJK Campaign and borrowed some of the stock merch, anticpating significant sales at this event. Lee was kind enough to provide an event-specific flyer in volume, a table banner reading "Ani supports Kucinich", and additional merch (shirts, buttons, bumper stickers, generic campaign flyers).

How it came off:

I arrived at the venue about and hour before the doors were to open, lugging several boxes of stuff. I made contact with event mamagement, got the table, and set up our materials. Also tableing the event were "Shut down Indian Point" and "Not in Our Name" groups. The volunteers showed up and we discussed our approach: 2 folks at the table and 2 folks circulating in the crowd. We all had on Kucinich shirts or buttons/stickers/etc.

Once the doors opened, the lobby got pretty densely populated from about an hour before the show start, thoughout the opening act and intermission, up until Ani hit the stage. From what I could see, the crowd was mostly college-age folks, with a significant GLBT contingent. At first, folks seemed a bit leery of approaching the table, so the strategy of having reps work the crowd worked well. After a while (maybe after they walked past us a few times and realized we weren't pitching energy drinks), more people wandered up and were willing to chat with the table reps.

After the main event started, only folks in the lobby were on their way to or from the restrooms, the smoking den, or the beer line, which streched the length of the lobby. Several times, I went down this line, handing flyers to folks who looked bored. On at least one occasion, I had a person come back for more information and to sign the contact list after having been handed a flyer. We had some GLBT-targeted literature which I handed out discretely to obvious same-sex couples, and seemed well-received.

What we accomplished:

While we did not sell any t-shirts (except to volunteers) we did sell a good number of buttons and stickers, and even a book or two. Total financial contribution was more than $50, I will leave the final accounting to Lee. The real pay-off of this event, however, was about three dozen names on the contact list and all of the 300 event-specific flyers handed out, significantly raising awarness of DJK's campaign with a valuable demographic, first-time and idealistic voters.

In summary, this event was not difficult to conceptualize and arrange, easy and fun to implement, and had measurable impact on the local political climate. I would call it a sucess.

My thanks to Marcie, Kelly & Rod for voluteering their time, to Lee for the support, and to Zena for lending us materials.