Action – Oct 26, 2005 – Iowa student protest

Advice Based on Experience from Iowa Chris Schwartz
The UNI Students for Social Justice and Cedar Valley United for Peace and Justice had a successful vigil tonight marking the grim milestone of 2,000 U.S troops dead in Iraq. We had over 80 people ranging in age from 13 to 86. We had a good spot on the evening news and coverage from two newspapers.

CVUFPJ and the UNI SSJ signed up to host the event that was call for separately from the AFSC and Move-on.org. Though we may have beefs with move-on, it is important that we work with whomever we can, when we can. Hosting move-on events that our within the realm of activism we do has allowed us to find new people to join our groups.

I did all the organizing for this event via email while I was at the conference in Berkeley. When I got back to town, everyone already knew about the event and worked to spread the word.

So my basic recommendation is that if there is an event posted by a group like move-on that is within your realm of work, sign-up to host the event, and get the names of everyone so you can get them involved locally. We did the same sort of things in August with our Cindy Sheehan solidarity vigil, we got 35 new contacts for that event alone. We got ten new contacts tonight.

Peace,
Chris Schwartz
Co-head UNI-SSJ
President Cedar Valley United for peace & Justice
Publisher of “The Legacy”

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