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December 17, 2002

My activist chops get put to the test

One thing that was nice about organizing this funeral is that it ran me through all my activist paces, and I felt pretty good about my range of skills as an activist. I've grown to the point where I can take a given event, easily assess the most effective way to make it happen in the available amount of time, and basically rattle off all the details of how to make it work without any trouble. And then -- and this is the kicker which was made clear to me through this event -- I can basically do all of the steps required to make it happen. My ability to do so was tested boot-camp-style in preparing for this funeral.

Now let me say that I'm not trying to brag here -- I'm just assessing myself as an activist and politician. And in no way am I claiming that I could have done this event alone. I depended on a great number of people in bringing this together, and I couldn't have done it without them. An activist alone is extraordinarily limited, no matter what his or her skillset is.

I just figure many of you come here thinking, "What's so special about this guy, that he thinks he can pull off this crazy presidential campaign thing?" I paraphrase, of course, but I assume you wonder what I bring to the table. One of the things I intend to bring to the table in the long run is to be a super-activist, the kind of activist that sends resounding ripples of activism around the country, and inspires people and stuff like that. And I've spent a long time developing a foundation of skills and knowledge in myself to make sure I'm up to the task.

I won't need all these skills in every situation, but I'm working to make it so that I have a functional level of knowledge and skill in almost every facet of politics and activism. Not only will it make it so I can play any role that might be needed -- from Emcee to poster designer to cameraman to spokesperson -- but it will mean I am more informed about the process, from the ground up. This will help in almost every decision I make as a politician, and as a campaigner.

Most importantly, it helps me help other people do activism, which is essential. I can help them first-hand, by making them a poster or writing a press release or outlining a strategy for them, and I can teach them what they need to do to make the change they hope for, so they can forge ahead on their own, hopefully a little wiser from my contribution.

One thing I want to work on is creating "carbon-copy events", and the Funeral for the Bill of Rights has great potential to be one of those. A carbon-copy event is a unique activist event which can be easily replicated in other places. Women in Black is an example of a very simple carbon-copy event turned into a movement. The Bill of Rights Defense Committee is an example of a much more complex (and much more effective) carbon-copy event turned into a movement.

(I don't mean that as a diss to Women in Black...I think they are a great organization, and their chosen action -- standing in black in silent vigil to oppose violence and war -- is a good one. It's simple, and it's not going to create the kind of major political change that the BORDC will, but it's one of the base components that acts as a glue for the movement. Your average peace rally is like that too. They don't achieve easily measurable results, or reach definite landmarks, but they serve their movements nonetheless. If peace activists didn't have peace rallies, the energy of their movement would suffer. And if Women in Black weren't out being silent and in black, it would be a lot easier for people to forget about the violence of wars in distant lands. Every little bit counts...even the folks who just cut out a newspaper article and make copies to post around town are a key part of things.)

I intend to draw up a manual for holding a funeral for the Bill of Rights, which will lay out all the steps, and provide all the materials I can give from here, like press releases, web pages, posters, etc.. I'm also going to start calling local LP leaders and insist that they start Bill of Rights Defense Committees in their areas, and hold a BoR funeral while they're at it.

As usual, I went on more than I intended...and I didn't even get to what I was going to write about, which was all of the tasks I did in preparation for this event. Well...what the heck, let me try and bust that out real quick. Note that I wasn't flawless in all this, by any stretch of the imagination, but I was at least competent, and in most cases fairly proficient. The short timeline cramped things big-time, and toward the end lack of rest was starting to get to me. One of my big weaknesses is putting so much into things that I wear myself out, and often I'm almost too worn out to perform effectively on the actual day of the event. I was right on that line at the funeral Sunday, and the same effect impacted my TV and radio appearances. Not so much tiredness (except for this morning's interview, where tiredness was definitely a factor), but being too hectic with things, and thus not sufficiently prepared.

That said, here are the various activist skills that got a workout this past week:

Networking: I did a lot of phone and e-mail networking with the core group of the new NCBORDC, and lots of other folks. Really, that coalition took shape a lot this past week along with the funeral preparation.

Press release: I wrote a press release for the event. I found a typo in it afterward, which burned me up. I have little tolerance for errors on publicly released things. You can see the release here. My friend Mary Nelson added the last paragraph.

Op-ed piece: I wrote a pretty sweet op-ed piece for the local paper, and I have gotten a number of calls and e-mails thanking me for it. It was the most-read opinion piece at the paper's website yesterday, for what that's worth. It was my second annual Bill of Rights Day op-ed. Last year I talked about Carnivore and the brutalization of the Fourth Amendment.

Web site: I set up the basic intro web site for our new coalition, and got it up in two days, in time for my op-ed piece, which directed people to the site.

Radio appearances: I did two radio appearances: an hour-long one in-studio, and then a five-minute one this morning over the phone. (Audio from these will be online fairly soon).

TV appearance: I was on the local community TV news hour. I've been both a guest and a co-host of this show a few times. The video of that appearance is here.

Desktop publishing: I designed the literature that we handed out that during the procession and funeral. I took a shortcut and used a copy of my op-ed piece for a big part of one side of it, but it served the purpose well, and time was short. i spent a lot of hours putting that op-ed together, and I didn't have a lot more hours to come up with another version of what would have amounted to the same points.

Props: I made the gravestone, which came out really nice. That wasn't easy, because art isn't my strong suit. More the opposite of that, really. But no one stepped up to the plate to make it, so it fell to me. I was painstakingly careful about making it, because it was the central visual prop in the demonstration, and it came out pretty close to perfect. There are pictures of it on the NCBORDC site. I also did a ton of work restoring and preparing the coffin. It was already made -- it's a leftover prop that was donated by the local Greens -- but it was really worn out. It's made of cardboard, and since the forecast was for rain, rain, rain, I had to make sure it would hold up. I fixed all the sags, used a big roll of packing tape and sealed it all up, and then re-painted it. The cool plaques on the side weren't made by me, but I conceived them, found the person to do it and oversaw the design (plus brought them in to be laminated). And I duct-taped them on the coffin. I also cut up a pair of my black sweatpants to make armbands for folks who didn't come dressed in black.

Supplies and grunt work: I planned and bought all the supplies, and brought lots of stuff from home on event day that needed to be brought -- like posterboard, markers, a digital camera, black armbands, etc. I also reserved the TV equipment, picked it up, and brought it to the event.

E-mail appeals: I sent out a couple good e-mail appeals to some of the main activist lists in the county, asking for help and then encouraging attendance in spite of the rain. I think the latter e-mail got through to at least a few people...it was all dramatic and persuasive, talking about how people had given their lives to defend the Bill of Rights, and couldn't they give an hour in the rain to do the same? That kind of thing.

Overall planning: Aside from a little feedback along the way, I basically thought all of this stuff up, and I was pleasantly surprised that I pretty much didn't miss any of the pieces. As I mentioned, the timing of everything wasn't perfect, but it wasn't like I was forgetting a given step -- just that I wasn't able to get it all done in the ideal time frame. The biggest hit due to this was the lack of media coverage, which is a big one. The press release went out way too late, because the time prior to that was filled up with other things. If I had gotten it out two days earlier, we almost surely would have had TV coverage, but I wasn't at all certain that we were going to have a media-worthy event until near the end of the week, and even then that was way in doubt due to the weather forecast. Plus, I had all the steps laid out in front of me, and I honestly wasn't sure if I was going to get them all together in time for the event.

That's all I can recall right now, and I need to stop and go to bed anyway. I just wanted to share a little of what it is that I do. I had the equivalent of an activist fire drill this week, and I passed, with moderately flying colors. I reached thousands of people, changed some minds, built a coalition, inspired and motivated some other activists, and got some extremely favorable exposure for my local Libertarian Party.

Oh, I also laid the groundwork for the future of our local Bill of Rights Defense Committee -- among other things, the local radio station has agreed to broadcast my proposed public forum where law enforcement will be asked to report on the impact of the war on terror in Nevada County and answer questions from the people. That's pencilled in for next February. :-)

Posted by Lance Brown at December 17, 2002 02:19 AM | TrackBack
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