AllPowerToThePeople.com

[ page 1 | page 2 | page 3 | print friendly version ]





Nader Days

    Heather and I were sitting around the kitchen table when the phone rang. I had never spoken to Matt Zawiski before, we had only just traded emails with our phone numbers a few days before but I got some sense that it was going to be Matt. I had probably gotten the sense it was going to be Matt every time the phone rang for the previous couple days but lets ignore that for now and just be impressed by the fact that I had a feeling it was going to be Matt and it was.

    I brought the phone back to the kitchen table. I think we were eating dinner. Matt started filling me in on the details of what he needed and where they were in terms of finding a location and setting up a first meeting. I could see Heather wondering who I was talking to and what I was talking about. I couldn't wait to get off the phone and start telling her about it, but while I was on the phone I just plaid it cool and spoke in vagueries. A few minutes later I was off the phone and Heather asked me who it was that I'd been speaking with. I turned to her calmly and said "I'm helping to bring Ralph Nader here to Buffalo to speak on April 25th. You wanna go?"

    Heather's eyes bugged out. Our very first conversation had started by her asking me about the book I was reading --Crashing the Party by Ralph Nader-- and she had told me the story a couple times about how hard she had tried to make it to hear Nader speak when he was supposed to come to Rochester. Yeah, so, we were pretty excited.

    I described the phone conversation and how weird it was that Matt said that he'd actually visited my website(corporations-suck.com) and thought it was really good. It was weird but Matt seemed more nervous to talk to me than I was to be speaking with him, and I'm traditionally pretty phone-shy. I also recall that as I was trying to describe him to her I said he was Matt from Democracy Now instead of Matt from Democracy Rising. She still picks on me about that every once in a while. It took me a good week or two to really get it down which was Democracy Now, the radio show, and which was Democracy Rising, the organization started by Ralph Nader.

    All night long, in the middle of conversations, I would stop and say "Guess what? Ralph Nader's coming to Buffalo!", and she would smile and say "I know," and hug me and we'd both just shake our heads in disbelief. For a while we genuinely disbelieved it. I think both of us thought that eventually we'd hear back that Nader had something better to do that night and the whole thing is called off.



The Planning Phase

    It was late March when we actually started to believe. Matt called the first meeting at a church in Lackawanna. I was ready to ride down on my bike but it occurred to me that since Heather didn't have work that night she should come too. She asked me whether I thought she was invited or not and I advised her not to bother about whether you're invited or not, just show up. That's how I get involved half the stuff I do anyway, I just show up and start helping out. It was a really cold and rainy night in late March and Heather's bike isn't a good distance bike so we took her car.

    I was expecting that this meeting was going to be different. I was used to going to meeting for other organizations that were attended by the last two or three hardcore social justice faithfuls. I figured this Democracy Rising meeting was going to be different. I envisioned a packed house full of people dying to be a part of bringing Ralph Nader to Buffalo. When we got there it was me and Heather and Matt and Ed from the co-op and Joe from the Green party.

    *sigh*

    Oh well, the important thing was that Matt from Democracy Rising (not Democracy Now) had come all the way to Washington and Nader would be here soon enough. I was really glad Heather had decided to come along, it seemed like she was going to be 20% of the attendance. There was a lot of sitting around in awkward silence and looking at the door and speculating on why this or that person hadn't shown up yet. Maybe a trip or two back out to the front door to make sure it wasn't locked and that people could get in. Eventually someone mentioned to us that the Green Party executive meeting was almost over and that they'd be joining us when they were through so we'd get another 10ish people from that. That was a huge relief. Then a few other people did start showing up while we were waiting, so by the time the meeting started we had about 15 people and another 4 or 5 people showed up way late as the meeting was underway.

    The meeting got underway and there was nonstop talk about what we needed to do and who we needed to contact and who knew how to contact them and how we could get media attention. There was a lot of discussion on what to call this event. A LOT. And a lot of opinions on why it shouldn't be called this or should be called that. Matt let the meetings range around a bit but kept them fairly well to the itinerary he had drawn up. He closed the meeting with a challenge to everyone to bring more people to the next meeting and the meetings were going to be weekly on Thursdays and they even had office space in downtown Buffalo being set up so it wouldn't be such an out of the way jaunt next time. I cam away from the meeting feeling like we had a whole lot of very competent people working on this thing and I was bound and determined that by the time it was all over I was going to find some kind of way to make an impact and have a noticeable contribution to the big show.



Making an Impact

    Heather had to work the next Thursday so not only had I failed in my challenge to bring an extra person but I couldn't even manage to bring the same person I had before. And there was a lot of that going around since the meeting ended up having fewer than 10 people all together. It was early April and we looked at the calendar and realized that we had four weeks to do EVERYTHING. I was still just kind of there. Everyone else was talking about who to contact to get this and that done. I would chime in about all the peace groups I worked with, but the Green Party people knew a lot of those same people and they knew all kinds of publicity people and with all of the ominous ideas that were flying around the room I still was just looking for my way to contribute.

    During the meeting it was also announced that we had settled on a name. Peace on Earth Week. It was happening during Earth Week and it was also going to focus on the war in Iraq and how to promote peace.

    Near the end of the meeting Matt mentioned that there was a preliminary version of the flyer up on the website. I had offered to do flyers for free while there were just a few of us around the table at the first meeting but they said they had a professional to take care of all the graphics. Ed from the co-op was already the webmaster of the Green Party website and I figured he'd be taking care of any web work they needed done. Graphics and Webwork that's mostly what I do so that's why I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find some way to contribute.

    I went home and looked at the flyer. Professional my ass. I was a little bit good. They said it was just a mock up, but that was my point. A week had gone by and we had a "pretty good" preliminary design. A half hour later I had designed my first flyer. My plan was to put it front of their faces and have them explain to me why exactly they were not going to accept my help. I felt like Matt was a busy guy and I didn't want to bother him but I also didn't want to wait a week so I emailed him a copy of the flyer. He said "Hey, this is great, we should print up some of these too."

    I was in!



I was in (over my head)

    I came down to the office the next day. They said there was going to be an increasing need for people to be in the office manning the phones that would be ringing more and more the closer we got to the day of the event. I was there for a while and Matt's cell phone rang a few times but the newly activated office phone number didn't seem to be ringing at all. I wanted to get started right away. I wanted to get the phone number up all over town and have the phones ringing off the hook. Matt sensed my enthusiasm and suggested that I take the flyer up to a copy shop and run off 150 or so and make a bunch of smaller ones and he'd pay me back. I biked back to my house to get Heather K, now home from work, and we drove up to Kinko's. Kinko's had put out a press release that they had switched to a whole lot more recycled paper or something so I figured I'd drop some business their way as a thank you. I was used to biking everywhere I went but I began to rethink that and use Heather's car in the evenings as a practical matter. I was thinking there might be a lot of running around with this Nader project and so just as a practical matter I would call a temporary cease fire to my war against all things internal-combustion.

    As soon as I'd copied off a thick stack of flyers I wanted to start hanging them. The next day I biked around the city hanging them at all the busy intersections and in all of the shops where I knew people. Then I biked back downtown to the Democracy Rising office to see if the phones were ringing off the hook yet.

    Nope.

    But one cool thing was that Ed from the co-op was there and he had put my flyer on the Democracy Rising website. Whenever I went down to the Democracy Rising office is seemed Matt was there, Ed was there. And nobody else was there. I started to get concerned. I was glad that they kept giving me things to do and I was playing a pretty big roll, but it was pretty plain to see that we could be doing a lot more if we had more manpower. I decided that that would be my new mission. I would find some people and get them down to HQ and we'd all get a lot more work done.

    So in addition to handing out flyers to everyone I was now asking them to volunteer. I felt like I had made a command decision. I assessed what we needed most, volunteers, and I started working on that. I made up a new flyer that said Volunteers Needed and I went to Kinko's to make another big batch of those (even though I hadn't gotten reimbursed for the first batch yet).

    The other big need I saw was website support. The Democracy Rising website was moving along at a crawl with updates for our event. People seemed to be happy with it, but as far as I was concerned RALPH NADER WAS COMING TO TOWN, HELLO! I had these big ideas about what could be done on the web. I wanted to pitch the idea to Matt but at the same time I was pretty sure he'd say no. I was very used to working with organizations headed up by older folks who were constantly explaining to me why they couldn't use any of my ideas or liked my ideas but wanted someone else to do it. I registered the domain PeaceOnEarthWeek.com just on the off chance that it might help him say yes but I was fully expecting him to say no way.

    That's why I like working with young kids like Matt. You explain to them what your vision is, and they say 'Yeah, that's interesting, go ahead let's see how that would work.'

    Four days later I had PeaceOnEarthWeek.com up and running. And it only took that long because I had to flyer the city and spend evenings unwinding with Heather and write a long article in response to Bruce Jackson's unexpected nonsense (more on that later).

    Days began to follow a pattern. Heather and I would go to bed at around 11. I would wake up around 3am and put in some good hours while the phone wasn't ringing. Then a few hours later she'd get up for work and we'd have breakfast and she'd head off. I'd ride around on my bike flyering every available surface I could find or stay in and do web work or I'd head down to HQ and see what they needed or I'd go to some Peace or Social Justice event and try to hit everyone with a little flyer. Sometimes I did all of those on the same day. Then Heather'd get home and I'd try to finish up so we could spend time together but it started taking longer and longer to finish up. I have to say she was very patient and understanding about the fact that "the Nader thing" was overrunning both of our lives and putting a lot of miles on her car some nights.

    Another thing that started taking a whole lot of hours was the Progressive Directory. I think the Progressive Directory was mentioned briefly at the very first meeting and then mentioned more at the second meeting. I think that it was decided by someone that Judy Einach from the Green Party was going to do it but I was so eager to get involved early on that I nudged my way into being able to assist her with it. Judy is someone at the Green Party who I've admired during my brief time working with the party. I see her accomplishing things and helping people so I was hoping to be a big help to her in assembling this document that was going to be handed out to 2000 people.

    The Progressive Directory was to be a pamphlet that had the names of all the local progressive organizations and contact info for them so that they could contact one another and so that all of the people, upon hearing Ralph's speech, would look at their pamphlet and know where to go to get involved and get active in the community. I had a ton of groups that I worked with and I envisioned them all with an influx of new members and fresh faces eager to help out.

    Okay. So. First thing. No one really told Judy she was volunteered to put this thing together. She was very busy doing all of the things she does and putting together a Progressive Directory was not on the schedule. So, all of a sudden it fell to me. Matt just looked at me and nonchalantly said that they needed me to put together the Progressive Directory one day as though that had been the plan from the beginning. Okay, I figured, I can do that. It was one of the more noble things we were trying to accomplish. I didn't have all of the contacts that the core Green Party people had but I had a ton of Peace and Social Justice contacts and I figured the party would help out a lot along the way. They helped out a little along the way, and the Progressive Directory that we ended up with ended up being very heavily weighted with Peace Groups but what the hell... this was "Peace On Earth Week" after all.

    We were running into a LOT of logistical problems setting this thing up but perhaps the biggest was that it took FOREVER to get tickets printed up. We kept waiting and waiting and passing out flyers and telling people we'd have tickets soon and there kept not being any tickets. Heather and I both started griping about how they should have come to town with a big box of tickets because by the time tickets were finally placed in our hands there were only 2 weeks left to sell them. I still have some tickets by the way in case anyone wants to buy some now that the event's over.



Sending out Invitations

    I asked for a block of 40 tickets. I figured I could sell all those and be back for more in a few days. I took a block of tickets with me to the co-op where there had been a ton of interest. Every time I mentioned Ralph Nader and Patti Smith coming to Buffalo people indicated that they couldn't wait to get tickets. When I finally showed up with tickets, they could wait. I sold about 3 tickets and got hit with a lot of the dreaded "remind me again next week." Remind me next week became the bane of my existence along with "Awww. I'm going to be out of town that weekend." It seemed like all of the people that supported Ralph Nader the most were all going out of town at the same time. Over the course of the weekend I went through my family and friends and managed to sell about 10. It was a lot harder than I ever expected.

    As hard as it was for me, it was even harder for Heather. She went some 70 miles to her old church where she had been part of the beginnings of a Green Party movement a while back only to find out that they now had changed their minds and felt guilty that they had ever voted their conscience and dared to hope. She came back totally deflated and didn't want to try to sell tickets anymore. I spent the rest of the day cheering her up. I think that was the only day in all of April that wasn't dedicated to "the Nader thing." She bought my 10th ticket so that I could table at the event. Thanks.

    We started having two meetings a week so that we could get more accomplished. I went back that Monday somewhat disappointed that I had only sold ten tickets but people were amazed that I had sold that many. Everyone else had sold far fewer. That was the first inclination I got that we weren't going to sell all 2000 tickets that we were shooting for. Days would pass and I would ask how we're doing with ticket sales and the sales were barely going up and Matt would just shrug and say "Ah, we always sell most of the tickets in the last couple days." Then I would nod and pretend to be reassured.

    There were lots of other let downs everywhere I looked. I remember a Saturday afternoon at a peace rally where I went up to one of my friends that works with labor and occupational safety and asked him how to get labor groups listed in the Progressive Directory only to be informed that a lot of labor groups supported Ralph in their hearts but they were all afraid or disallowed to say it out loud. His group would not be listing in the directory not because it was called the "Progressive Directory" but because it had Ralph Nader's name on it.

    Then there was the day that Heather and I went to U.B.'s peace marathon. There were flyers for it all around so I was expecting a well attended opportunity to sell tons of tickets. When we got there it seemed like Heather and I were about the only audience members that weren't speakers. I was still excited because I would get a chance to see who Mike Niman was face to face. He was allowing me to reprint his articles on my website and we had exchanged a few emails but this was my first chance to get to see him speak and I wanted to photograph him to work up a caricature of him on the website. By the time I finally got annoyed with the performance art that I actually left, everyone else had left before me. Heather and I decided to cut our losses and just stick a Nader flyer up on the bulletin board but then we saw that Mike Niman was still in the food court so we stood around waiting to introduce ourselves. Mike Niman was the person who initially gave me names and contact information on the Buffalo and Erie county green party so as I was first getting involved in "the Nader thing" I was expecting a thunderous endorsement of the event from Mike Niman that would encourage everyone to attend. I got to introduce myself and speak with him for a bit and he explained why he wasn't supporting the event and I nodded and "understood" but understood also that Ralph Nader's only coming to Buffalo once and it sucks big time that the Nader team has all fallen apart in advance of his arrival. I didn't get his picture either. I've decided that I suck as a photographer since I don't ever want to bother anyone by taking their picture.

    And then there was the whole Bruce Jackson thing. Egads! Bruce Jackson is a guy with a website about Buffalo and Buffalo politics. One would think that Ralph Nader coming to Buffalo would be, pretty much, related to Buffalo and politics. Matt was trying to get press coverage anywhere he could find it so I'm sure Matt wrote to him. I wrote to him asking him to list his website in the progressive directory. I DOUBT anyone else from our camp wrote him but maybe another person or two did. So then he writes this long article called That Pissant Nader is coming to Buffalo and talked about how Nader's "promotional organization" was flooding him with email asking him to mention the event on his website. The horror! Instead he wrote this long diatribe about how Ralph Nader owed everyone an apology for having run for president. I was incensed and even though I had a million other things to do I took some time and wrote a long response called I Own My Vote!! Felt good to write it. The people down at HQ liked it. Other than that I didn't really have any time to get people to read it.

    So after a lukewarm response from the peaceniks and activists, a thanks but no thanks from labor and a not interested from a lot of local media, I went looking for the minority community. I grew up on the east side, I'm half black, if I don't make sure the east side gets an invitation who will? I went and flyered all the main streets on the east side on my bike. In retrospect I realize that the flyers didn't really say WHY anyone should go see Ralph Nader, they just said Ralph Nader was coming to Buffalo. If you didn't know who that was, why would you care? The next thing I wanted to do was to get to a church or two on the East side. I'd done as much as I could do in my UU church where I'm still pretty new; I've been a member of the Quaker church in Pittsburgh since I was about 8, so I figured I'd give the Quaker church on the east side a try.

    No black people.

    Not really any young people either.

    The church seemed to like me a lot. I stood up and spoke about my mother and her Quaker memorial service but all in all I didn't even end up getting any of their social justice organizations listed in the progressive directory. I made some friends there but didn't get anything accomplished that helped the event.

    So former masten district councilman David Collins' house is right next door to the Quaker church. He's been a friend of the family since before I was born and I worked as a summer intern in his office for a few years when I was younger. I stopped by and paid him a visit. I didn't expect him to want to get involved but he did. He even came to one of our Democracy Rising organizational meetings. He put out the word for me through the organizations that he was associated with. It didn't actually work, but I sure appreciated the attempt and the support.



The Last Days

    In addition to everything else that was going on Matt informed me that a very important part of the whole event was getting organizations to table at the event. They needed to help buy or sell 10 tickets and they could table. I figured that I could help with that since I was contacting organizations anyway for the Progressive Directory. Helping out with tabling turned into Matt asking me to do the whole thing. I told him that there was no way I could add that to everything else I was doing and he agreed to find someone else to do it but suggested that I should do it while he was looking for someone. I kept looking around the office and there didn't seem to be a lot of "someone"s to chose from so I got the impression that it was going to be me.

    As hard as I tried to get volunteers down there I was getting no results. I was still reminding people and outright begging people to go down there and help out but I had given up on the idea that it could actually work. Then one day I went down there and a guy named David M. was there and he said that I had told him about it. I didn't remember but I was about ready to do a cartwheel. He started doing flyering and helping out at the office. A couple other people were starting to show up so I was freed up to do other stuff. Super!

    So then came Christina. One day she was just there. She called me on the phone and said she was available to help me set up the tables and asked what I needed her to do. I, apologetically as possible, informed her that I needed her to do the whole thing. Without missing a beat she started in on getting people set up to table and without her we'd have been in deep doo doo.

    Christina came on a little strong though. She was the kind of person that looked at you, assessed you, figured out what you were capable of, got you to commit to doing it and then followed up to make sure you did it. Heather and I had already been committing to doing things and doing them for weeks without a Christina there so we were a bit resentful at first of her style. We're quiet folks at heart and Christina is very outgoing. A lot.

    Another thing I scrambled to get done toward the end was to include ALL of Earth week. We were calling this event Peace on Earth Week after all. There were a lot of environmental events going on during Earth Week. I decided to generate some greater than the sum of our parts action going by reaching out to everyone I could find that had an event that week and come up with one flyer that had all of our events that we could all participate in distributing. Mostly I was the only one that ended up distributing it but it was good to have a flyer that they would allow us to put up in Erie County Libraries and it also had a Buff State sponsored event listed on it so we could put it up at the college.

    Then one day we looked up and there was Jason. I didn't know where he came from or what he was doing there but in the final days he was always at the office and I gradually became aware that he was the boss. At first I thought he was just pushy. He had a way of saying "Okay this is what we're going to do," when everyone was already doing something. He kept trying to communicate to everyone that we shouldn't worry and everything was under control. Before he started doing that no one seemed worried but now people were looking around all paranoid like "Sweet Jesus! Is everything out of control and no one is telling us?"

    Matt had been keeping things at a more even keel. We all knew that we weren't selling the ticket numbers we were hoping for but Matt had a perpetual stay positive attitude so we all just stayed positive for him. Personally I was just glad Nader was coming and that I was playing an important role in helping out. For as few people as we had we were accomplishing a tremendous amount. Matt kept getting us into various newspapers and weeklies and the phones began to ring a bit more. I was trying to get as many tickets sold as possible, even if they weren't counted as my sales. If I could get someone to buy a ticket from one of the ticket vendors or one of the organizations hoping to table it was all the same to me. I had sold my 10 tickets so that I could table for GBINet.info. At first I had in mind the fact that they said they would put the organizations who sold the most tickets near the front but over time I realized that I was going to be the person deciding who goes where and I could just put myself up front. It was pretty clear that there weren't going to be other organizations selling more tickets than me anyway. Nobody was coming back and asking for more than their 1st ten.

    As we were heading into the homestretch I had sold about 20. When I tried to get volunteers down there it generally failed, but when Christina tried to get volunteers down there it was working. In the final days there were about 6 to 10 people at any given time at the office, many of them, I'm guessing, were friends of Christina and they were dedicated and diligent. I stopped through a couple times a day picking up more flyers or dropping off ticket money and coordinating the tabling and the Progressive Directory. I was working on a few hours sleep every day and wondering what it was going to be like when this event finally happened and I could get back to my regular life.

    On the day before the show I stopped down in time to see the Green Party rolling out the giant Earth Ball. It was a big 8 foot globe that they rolled all around downtown with their green party hard hats. It was quite a sight and I hear it generated a lot of interest. I had come down to show Matt the Progressive Directory final design and then borrow his van to drive the final version all the way out to Lancaster. This was pay dirt for me. The idea that everyone who attended the event was going to get a copy of this directory and have the contact information for all of these wonderful organizations was the best reason to be involved in a project like this. We ended up having to get the directory printed as cheaply as possible and it wasn't stapled together quite the way I had envisioned it but it was a start at least. My latest GBINet project is called ProgressiveDirectory.com and it has grown out of what was begun back in April.

    Just as I was getting back home they called me to remind me that they needed laminates. Lots of them. I had offered to make them since I had a color printer but I wasn't expecting to add that to the list of things I needed to do at the 11th hour. Fortunately Heather had taken the day before the show off and she was willing to help print up laminates and print up GBINet stuff so that I could table at the event while I ran to photocopy a gazillion more things in her car. I was trying to decide whether to skip the last organizational meeting and work straight through it or go to the meeting and just stay up all night. Heather had a severe stress headache so I stopped to tuck her in so that she could sleep it off and then I went to the meeting so I wouldn't be keeping her awake with printing and typing and everything.

    I got down to the office and it was pretty pandemonious. Phone banking was going on. There was a crew in the back room cutting out and laminating the volunteer, security, backstage & access passes that we'd just finished and run down there a few hours earlier. Matt was on the phone with one person then the next. Christina was locking down lots of last minute tablers. Jason was reassuring people that everything was under control. Ed from the co-op was getting the stage crew and final stage preparations finalized. The meeting did NOT look like it was going to come together any time soon. So I started photographing people in action so that I could include pictures in this article someday. Then I went in the back and helped people laminate.

    An hour later the meeting still showed no signs of coming together. Jason kept calling the meeting together and everyone kept right on working. Someone had asked one of the backroom folks to run to an office supply store to get some supplies for the podium banner that I had made. It was going to create a big disturbance in back room operations so I volunteered to go. Then they started suggesting a million billion other things I could go and get for them while I was out and I told them I was going to the office supply store and nowhere else. I lied. I went to the office supply store and then I went home. I checked on Heather who was still awake with a pounding headache. I massaged her head for a bit and then headed back downtown hoping I had missed the meeting. I hadn't. At 10pm it was finally just getting underway.

    I don't remember if anything happened at the meeting. The rest of the night and much of the next morning were a blur. I know I must have done all of the stuff I needed to do to get ready to promote GBINet.info but I don't remember. I don't think I got any sleep.



Day Of

   

    Day of. That's what they called it. That was the "lingo". I called it April 25th but I was severely outnumbered. Everyone else was 'day of' this and 'day of' that. "Alex, let me ask you, what are you doing day of?", "Who's the volunteer coordinator for day of?", "Now that it's day of maybe we should think about calling tomorrow day after of!"

    Heather had made it clear from the beginning that all she wanted to be doing 'day of' was sitting in the audience and listening to Nader. They managed to rope her in as a 'day of volunteer' though on the condition that they wouldn't expect anything out of her after 7.

    Since Christina had to run around doing mostly everything on 'day of' I was nominated and elected to be the table coordinator. That was the perfect job for me anyway since I knew half the people who were tabling and could make out a logical plan on where they were supposed to go based on how much they had helped us out. I put the NYCLU right up front since they had made the whole thing possible by providing some great office space. I put myself next to them since I had all but killed myself selling tickets and doing everything else. I had personally had a hand in selling 1/50th of the tickets that were sold. Who knows how many I sold indirectly.

    They asked Heather and I to come in around 1:30. As IF! We arrived around 3 and we were lucky to make it by then. We were still plenty early. They were still starting to string together all the access laminates and see how many volunteers they had and trying to logically divvy them up. Jason was still saying "okay this is what we're gonna do" a lot, and then people would decide if that made sense or not and just do it the way that made sense.

    There were enough volunteers that we could have four folks coordinating the tables. That seemed like plenty. They gave me an all-access pass (kind of them since I'd made them) and made me the captain of tabling sort of like when you pick teams in gym class. I picked Heather and lucked into having two volunteers, a young lady named Sarah and a guy who's name I think began with a T, who were really super helpful and fun to talk to. They were a couple also. I took the tabling team into the auditorium and we looked around. Heather and I had written who's table was where already so really there wasn't much to do other than asking people who they were and reading the signs on the table until you found that person and then going to tell Heather to cross their name off the list.

    Of course nothing in life ever goes that smoothly. There were people showing up not sure if they were supposed to be there. It took a long time to get the hand stamping working so we had to try to keep track of who was coming and going for quite a while. There were people showing up who didn't seem to be on the list but in most of those cases I would know them and know whether or not they were supposed to be tabling. Then JB showed up. I had only just met him earlier in the week because he put together one of the Peace on Earth Week events. That Tuesday he had staged a tent-in across from the local Fuel company to protest their deforestation in Pennsylvania and he had a very cold and rainy day for a tent in but they kept at it regardless. JB wasn't sure if he should be there because he didn't know if he'd sold enough tickets. I asked how many they'd sold. Two. Hrmmm... I thought of all the people that had struggled mightily to sell the required ten and I didn't quite know what to make of two. We were making a lot of exceptions for people who'd sold six or seven but I wasn't sure about two. I think I remember asking him to hang around and see whether there was more tabling space after everyone had shown up but I don't remember it clearly. There was a lot going on.

    Then, during the organized chaos I kept looking at my GBINet table. I was waiting for Chuck Richards, one of the writers for Corporations-Suck to show up because he was scheduled to man my table. The tables were filling up with organization and mine was still just sitting there. I was starting to worry. To be honest a LOT of the work I'd been doing I was doing in the hopes of gaining some publicity for GBINet. Now it looked like I was going to have a table with literature and no person. Chuck did show up before the show started so that was a big sigh of relief there.

    We all kept looking around to get a sense of how many people were in attendance. For the longest time the crowd looked very sparse. I was mindful of the fact that there weren't going to be 2000 people and we'd printed up 2000 Progressive Directories so I would head out to the lobby to grab a handful and put them in my bookbag from time to time. I still have a few extra. :)

    Then there was the Access Storefront situation. We had been promising organizations 2 by 4 feet of table space. When we got to the venue we discovered the table along the side were very narrow. Then there were a few wide tables along the back. We decided that in the interest of fairness we would have everyone tabling on the sides and leave the tables in the back empty to avoid people arguing over who wants what kind of table. At some point Bill Marx of Pax Christi came in and he set up his table along the back near where most people were entering the event floor. We pointed out to him that we'd reserved a spot up near the front for him but he asked if he could just remain where he had set up. Well, apart from being a really nice guy who had bought ten tickets right when we first started selling them, he was also one of the speakers for the event so I was happy to let him set up wherever he wanted, but I told the rest of the tabling team to keep anyone else from setting up along the back. A while later Heather came and pointed out to me that someone had set up and started tabling along the back.

    We went to check it out together. It was Access Storefront. They weren't on the list. We asked them what they were doing and they just sort of looked at us with those young innocent faces. They said they hadn't sold any tickets because they hadn't heard about this whole thing until it was too late but they figured that rather than just letting these tables go empty they would just allocate one to themselves. I again thought about organizations that had worked very hard to sell tickets and JB who had at least made an effort and Heather and I decided absolutely not. Access Storefront may be a great and very worthwhile cause, and the people there tabling were acquaintances of ours and people that I like but there was no way that this was fair. We told them that they would have to leave. So then they started with the delaying tactics hoping we would let them stay because we were too busy to keep dealing with them. I was perfectly willing to try to pick them up and physically remove them. They insisted on speaking to "someone in charge" and we told them that someone in charge was going to tell them the exact same thing and besides everyone in charge was way too busy.

    It was at just that moment that Jason (everything's under control) walked by. He was pretty much in charge somehow so we figured we'd snag him, he could tell these kids to leave and they'd leave. We told him the situation and how they'd sold zero tickets and how we were trying to leave the back tables empty. So Jason got this Final Jeopardy look on his face and started weighing all the options as "people in charge" are wont to do. He decided "Ah, let em stay."

    ...

    I was pretty pissed off. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and watch his head flop all around. Heather quit right then and there on the spot. It was close to 7 anyway but even if it hadn't been, Democracy Rising could count on no more help from her. I tried to just concentrate on the positive. Access Storefront's a great place and hopefully they would generate some interest in their project. But then later I caught sight of JB and felt pretty crappy.

    Right after that they called a meeting so that Jason could show us all how to Jingle our box. Yes, we were to be assigned numbered cardboard boxes and he was explaining how this was the very important part of the show. The part where they ask the audience for money and we run up to anyone who looks like they might be inclined to give and collect their money. He demonstrated the proper way to shake your box when it had change in it to attract people's attention. I already had a good sense of how dismally this was going to go but in for a penny, in for a pound I guess. I got caught up in a conversation as they were doling out the boxes anyway so I got issued one of the last boxes and became a floater. That means I didn't have a specific section I was in charge of I could just walk around at will as an extra box.

    I jingled my box like a trooper. I tracked down friends of mine in the audience and relieved them of their pocket change. I jingled my box a lot but I live in a city full of broke people who had already paid more than $10.00 to get in and they were having a pretty negative reaction to the evangelical fervor coming from the front stage asking them to give till it hurt. There was plenty of economic pain to go round already. I was sure that toward the front there were probably some wealthy people helping out the progressive movement with some generous contributions, but my exhaustion and crankiness was catching up to me and all I wanted to do was return my box and watch the show next to Heather.

    On the way back from returning my box I realized I should probably go check on Chuck. I found the GBINet table and there were four people just having a nice meandering conversation right in front of my table blocking anyone who might be interested in picking up some literature. I tried to stare them down for a while but they were fully engrossed in obliviously taking up space. I looked around and realized that everyone was heading for a seat anyway and no one was really looking at the tables any more so I just let the matter drop but I kinda wondered how long Chuck had been there watching these people block my table.

    I went to join Heather. I had missed getting to see Bill Marx, Judy Einach or Eric Johnt. I had been in the Jingle your box meeting while they were on. But Heather had saved a great seat for me and it was time to watch Patti Smith open up for Ralph. She gave a great performance and got the typically sedentary Buffalonian crowd up and dancing. Toward the end of her set she got up and read off the list of thank yous that Matt had handed to her. She gave a special thank you to GBINet and Heather and I looked at each other and said That's us!

    I looked around to see how many people had just heard Patti Smith mention our websites. During most of the night the place had looked really empty but now as the main show was underway the auditorium looked pretty full. The final door count was 1500 out of a 2300 seating capacity. I was glad we'd gotten that many.

    Then Ralph took the stage. I took out my digital camera and began to walk around and shoot pictures. There was a lot of other media there shooting as well and I thought about how everyone taking a picture was also getting a picture of the podium banner that I'd made a couple nights before. It's probably the most photographed design I've ever made, simple though it was.

    This whole event was called Peace on Earth Week. I had been telling people that it was going to be about peace and environmentalism. It ended up being about corporations and corporate control over everything. That was awesome. As far as I'm concerned everything that's going wrong with warmongering and environmental devastation is just a symptom of corporate domination over our lives. I had been writing about it regularly on my Corporations-Suck website and everything he said felt like a vindication of everything I had been saying all along. The crowd was riveted too. I kept thinking about how easy it was going to be to get some people to take some corporations-suck leaflets after this well presented speech on the topic of corporate malfeasance. But as Nader spoke on and on into the night I began to change my mind. Eventually it was after 11 pm and I knew that in this sleepy town that meant everyone was going to run for the door the moment he stopped speaking.

    That was basically what happened. It was well after 11 when he finished. The place emptied out almost immediately. The audience and the tablers all rushed out the door. Heather had been hoping for a chance to visit a lot of tables but they were gone. I had been hoping for some people to visit my table which I was now manning myself but they were gone. The only people left were the folks in line to get a book signed by Ralph. Heather went up to get his picture while I tried to chase down anyone in a seat anywhere and shove a GBINet flyer into their hand. I still had tons left over. After there was no one left I went up to get a GBINet flyer autographed by Nader. I was one of the last ones in line and I must say that he has very poor penmanship at the end of the night.

    There was an after party for all of the volunteers at a place that Matt knew on the East Side afterwards but there was no way we were going. Heather had work in the morning and I was barely able to walk straight. We went home and fell asleep before our heads hit the pillows.



Days After

    The very next morning Heather had to go to work very early. I felt for her. I was glad that she was going to be able to get back to a regular sleep schedule now that the Nader thing was over. The Green Party was throwing a regional conference that morning. Lots of Green party people from across the state were in town for the big show so they figured this was the perfect time to have a pow wow. I thought seriously about skipping it but then I remembered back to when this had all began when the Green Party of Erie County barely knew who I was and I thought it might be nice to show up for the morning and maybe someone would say hey that was a great job you did making that directory, designing that website, selling all those tickets, putting up all those flyers, writing that software to organize the tables, running around like a lunatic doing 80 million things at once or something like that. Maybe. Even if not at least they knew who I was now.

    I got through the door and they asked me for my $15.00. Nothing on the flyer said anything about $15.00, I should know because I made the damn flyer. My bad mood got worse. I was pretty sure that I was flat broke but then I remembered that during the confusion of the show one of my friends had come up to me and paid me for three tickets that I'd given her to sell for me. So I did have $45 though it technically wasn't mine. I paid my admission fee out of that money and then later in the day when I saw Matt I told him I had sold two more tickets when actually I had sold 3 more. Oh well Matt, you're not getting your $15.00 back. Sorry.

    Then the Green Party started talking and talking and talking and talking. They are very good at talking. If they work on their listening a little bit they might really have something. There was a full on attempt to declare victory over having put on such a wonderful event here in Buffalo but there was an undercurrent of disappointment with the attendance and my mood certainly wasn't helping things any. In the bigger picture there was still a great deal of general sadness that George W. Bush had taken the country to war with Iraq and wasted tens of billions of dollars and killed lots of people and made many more very seriously ill while the news media acted like a pro-Bush cheerleader.

    A couple hours into the talking and talking and talking they made the announcement that Ralph Nader himself was going to grace the gathering with an appearance. So that was pretty cool at least.

    A bit later Nader arrived. Everyone that was running for an office in the near future got photographed with him so they could use the picture in their campaign. Then Ralph started speaking to us. Speaking very frankly and letting us know exactly what he felt was wrong with the Green Party. There were too many loners. Nobody was getting out and talking to people and the grassroots growth that was supposed to be happening wasn't happening. The Greens seemed to be to shy to ask for help in his estimation and especially financial help. That struck me as funny, everyone I'd met during the course of this whole Nader thing seemed to have no problem asking for all the help I had to give and then some and all of my money too.

    I had been half asleep all morning but these suggestions he was making were waking me up. With my eyes half open and in slow deliberate words I began to articulate the notion that just for the sake of identifying our enemy it might be good to keep in mind that there is a multi-billion dollar public relations industry out there that is hard at work keeping people inactive and distracted. Ralph looked at me and told me I was "rationalizing futility."

    ...

    Rationalizing Futility??? Excuse me? I would have to believe in futility before I could start rationalizing it. As far as I'm concerned futility is a waste of time. If I were the type of person that believed in futility I had plenty of chances to give up when the whole Nader thing looked futile. When Labor told me I could count on no help from them and that they couldn't afford to be associated with anything that had Ralph's name on it things looked pretty bleak. When Bruce Jackson wrote all that crap about how Ralph Nader owed the whole world an apology for running for president and trying to make the world better I could have packed it in rather than staying up all night writing a response. When I kept asking how are the ticket sales going and Matt would look at me with that "stay positive" expression and remind me how tickets always start off selling slowly that would have been the perfect opportunity to just let somebody else do everything.

    I don't believe I was rationalizing anything. I was doing exactly what I said I was doing: attempting to properly identify the enemy. It doesn't make any sense to me to sit around and wring our hands and lament about "I don't know why we can't get people to be more politically active." I think I know exactly why, and it has to do with big Corporations that retain these huge law and lobbying firms to rewrite the laws in their favor and, to an even greater extent, it has to do with these Public Relations firms that spend all kinds of money researching the American Public and conducting studies on how to make them feel one way or another and then actively using that science to get the people feeling like things are as good as we can expect them to ever get and even if we don't like the way things are we are always going to be powerless to change things. And yes they have billions of dollars that I don't have and it's very difficult to compete with that but rather than saying things are futile I tap these keys every day and try to wake up any person that will listen. I will never believe things are futile and I will keep fighting for change in every way I can think of --big, little or in the middle-- until they pry my keyboard out of my cold dead hands and stitch my mouth shut.

    Rationalize that.



    So then days went by and life slowly began to return to normal. I started catching up on some sleep and working through my overrun email box and my mood slowly began to improve. The next Friday Democracy Rising had a going away party. There was a whole lot going on that Friday. There was a Critical Mass bike ride that I really wanted to make it to but couldn't. There was a Faces of Iraq exhibit that we ended up going to and staying at for a while. We stopped in at the Democracy Rising party long enough to partake in some free food and meet this guy that had written a great introductory speech for Nader when he spoke earlier at Canisius. I lost the link to his speech but it said a lot of the same things I said in my reply to Bruce Jackson. Matt gave us a tour of this huge hall where the party was being held and then we wished Matt well and went to the Access storefront. They were having a grand opening type event and we wanted to make sure there were no hard feelings after we'd tried to toss them out of the building. Heather had a lot of books in her car that she had been going to donate to the UU church but they found a much better home at the Access storefront. They seemed very glad to be receiving the types of books she had compiled over the years so we left with all fences mended there and plenty of good karma points knowing that books would be well used.

    Then, just a couple weeks ago Matt called me. He said they were doing another Nader thing in Baltimore and he wanted to know if I was available to help out. Even better I would get to work with Jason since Matt has an illness in the family.

    "Sure, why not?" I said. I'm sure there has to be some struggling peace and social justice organizations in Baltimore that are made up of the same kind of great people in our organizations here. If they can benefit from my labor then we can score another one for the good guys. And in working with Jason this time around he's pretty easy to work with. We have two very different styles, but I think I could keep from shaking him if I saw him again. Every movement needs diversity.

    Or something like that.

    Okay, so that's my story.

    -gea

[ page 1 | page 2 | page 3 | print friendly version ]