Back to my writing page
The familiar non-showering, "social justice" seeking, tree-hugging, anti-Nike, Mumia-freeing, GeneMod banning, "two wheels good/four wheels bad" crowd plans to protest and "shut down" the upcoming Bush-Gore debate at UMass. Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to show up, make our voices heard, pass out literature, and try to attract some media attention to our ideas.
I realize that the boundary between counter-protesting and joining the protest are somwhat blurry here. All of us would like to see Brown and Nader force Bush and Gore to respond to some serious questions. And as much as we hate to sanction them in any respect, we do agree with the Nader-philes on a few other isolated issues such as ending the drug war and corporate welfare. In essence then, we'll be there not to counterprotest their position on the debates, but the subtext behind it. We'll use our judgment once we're on the scene to decide how to respond to each of their events, but we're mainly there to make our opposition to their views and values known. We need to be there to show that:
1. The bulk of the Eco-Fascist/Collectivist agenda is morally indefensible and economicly senseless; and
2. That for the genuine and legitimate issues they bring up, there are morally and economically superior free-market alternatives to the green/leftist solutions. In short, we want to be there to refute their arguments against free trade, capitalism, and individual rights.
The protesters have planned their events for Tuesday, October 3 on Morrisey blvd., which leads to the debate site on the U-Mass Boston campus. Their website states that they plan "a street festival, nonviolent civil disobedience, and a debate in the streets." The tentative plan is to meet at the Park St. station, perhaps around 7ish, and head over to Morrisey blvd. from there. We'll move around their area passing out literature (which these people tend to collect and read), and get up close and personal when we can.
At the last counterprotest I attended, the literature could have been a lot more effective, so I'm hoping that we'll have time to generate some persuasive and informative half page flyers that will trigger some brain activity in these hippies. I'm not sure if I'll have time to do it myself, so if there are any writers out there with a bit of free time, please get in touch with me. I feel like we want 2 flavors of flyer, each focused on one of the bullet points I mentioned above. We'll also include links to websites like capitalism.org and libertarianism.org on the bottom, so don't feel like you have to cover every detail. The goal is to have these sumbitted by the end of the week so we can edit them and have them printed. Worst comes to worst I suppose we can use something that's already out there. It would also be cool to get some bright orange t-shirts made to enhance our visibility (like these), maybe with dollar signs on the front and a few good quotes on the back (I'm open to suggestion on this).
Anyway, please contact me as soon as you read this and let me know that you want to get involved; I'll put in the rush order for the shirts if there's enough interest. So tell your friends and spread the word, we need to get this thing rolling now. Thanks!
-- Will $erwetman, 9/26/00
Back to my writing page