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http://www.AllPowerToThePeople.com/events/NaderDays



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 played 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.

Ed and Matt Z.

    I was expecting that this meeting was going to be different. I was used to going to meetings 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 came 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 is 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. It 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 it 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).

John Curr of the NYCLU with Ralph Nader

    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.

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