Day 7 - Church & Meeting
Sunday, April 3. I got up around 8:30 am. Bonnie was up and typing away like a madwoman on the computer. I’m pretty fast, but she is lightining speed. I asked her about local Catholic churches and she recommended the St. Anne’s Shrine, over on Isle La Motte. She said it was the oldest church in the state, and one of the oldest in the US. Sounded cool to me. I went back asleep a bit, and I left around 9:30 to try and make the 10 o’clock mass.
I got to explore more of the Champlain Islands a bit. I had only thusfar seen the southern part, up to Hardy’s house. Now I saw more of the northern/central part, and it was pretty nice. I got to St. Anne’s right on time, but it was deserted. The chapel was small, and looked like it was set up to do services outside. There were pews under a gazeebo type roof that were stacked up. I walked around the complex a bit. It seemed like a tourist spot. The office was closed. I went to the other office/visitor center and the doors were unlocked. First I went in a downstairs room, it looked like they could have Mass there, there were pews set up, but it was disserted and was being used to store some stuff. All the statues of Jesus and Mary, and various Saints and Popes and such were kind creepy. They were like 4 feet tall or more. It sounds terrible, but the Jesus statue reminded me of the “Buddy Christ” spoof in the movie Dogma. Different pose obviously, but same material in the statue. Eh, I guess I agree with the Protestants that us Catholics can go overboard on the whole “graven images” thing.
I walked around upstairs, still no one around. I walked right into the office and could have swiped a bunch of nice computers. Of course I run the risk of smoting, but I’m a good Catholic boy and wouldn’t dream of it. In any event it sucked that everything was closed down. Just open in the summer I guess. I got back in the car and continued north through the islands looking for a church. The Champlain Islanders must be a heathen people, (that’s a joke, chill out) as I didn’t see any churches the entire way. I was thinking about trying New York or Quebec, but instead went east into Swanton. I found a random church there with a service that had just started at 10:30. I think it was a non-denominational Protestant church. I gave it a shot.
It was a small place, I found a seat half way down. A nice woman, Vicki, greeted me as I sat and introduced herself. They were singing some song. The drums kinda threw me off, but I went with it. I was new, so they had me introduce myself. The preacher guy got up and started talking, but he had an accent so I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then he started talking about his wife I think, and started crying. I felt bad for him, but I don’t know what he was saying. Then he read out of some pamphlet he found. Then the music guy got up and did another song or two. He had an accent too, so when he talked I couldn’t understand him. I understood him when he sang, but he wasn’t a good singer at all.
Then a third guy got up and talked a bit. He started with an accent, then dropped it - which was confusing. He invited everyone to tell some personal stories over the last week of how God worked in their lives. I was thinking about telling the story about how randomly Alexis and Rio came up, and the divine path to that. But then of course I’d have to go into why I’m there, and I didn’t want to get into a drinking age debate in church, heh. Then we prayed, and people called out different prayers. It was very participatory. When singing, people would call out different songs they wanted to sing. At one point a guy brought out a letter someone wrote him about missionary activity in the world, and he was invited to come up to the lectern and read the entire letter. It was all very loose and casual like that. Eventually the preacher guy got up and started going through different Bible passages that supported a general theme of missionary work. He made the case that even in the Old Testiment, there were references to spreading the faith far beyond Israel. That was interesting. Vicki lent me her Bible. It was a bit hard to follow in her Bible, because it was chock full of footnotes, and citations, and notations, and appendixes, and other supporting material.
The service lasted longer than I expected. Still not done at noon. But I had the Vermont meeting at 1, so I needed to get out of there. Hardy had called me to see where I was, but I didn’t answer (ya know, being in church and all) but I left soon after. I called Hardy when I got out and he said to meet him at the meeting in Burlington.
The meeting was at the Fletcher Free Library, downtown Burlington. I got there a quarter to and set up the meeting room. I waited a bit for the rest to show up, then skipped out to the bathroom and when I got back everyone was there and resetting up the room. We got started soon. Ken, Hardy, Dave, Heavenly Ryan, Jeremy Ryan, and Kevin Ryan (first two Ryans are married, third Ryan is unrelated), were the NYRA members in attendence at the start, plus Nancy Lynch, a leader of the Marijuana Policy Project’s successful campaign to get medical marijuana passed in Vermont. Plus a leader of several other campaigns in the state. Later Jay came, and Larry, the President of UVM’s SSDP chapter showed up. Overall a pretty good turnout, but not much better than a typical NYRA-VT meeting. None of the new recruits came.
Ken whipped out the Robert’s Rules of Order book, and started the meeting. They approved the new members we recruited, and proposed bylaw changes, and nominated people for different offices. Then we took a “recess” and Nancy started her presentation. She went over her history and past experience. She was in sales for 20 years before turning political. Her first issue was with passing a law to legalize home birth in Vermont. She was up against the hospitals, and the state health department, and many other powerful interests, but she was able to organize a grassroots campaign with a budget of just a few hundred dollars that succeeded in getting the bill passed. Very interesting stuff.
Then she moved on to working on medicinal marijuana in Vermont, working for the Marijuana Policy Project, and succeeded in passing it. She didn’t talk about this as much, she intended to bring it up as we went on with the training, but she still did some impressive stuff. Now she is working on the taxation and regulation of marijuana (aka legalization) in Vermont for MPP.
She talked a lot about her past campaigns, and gave advice on what worked and what didn’t. She was very helpful. Of course it would have been better if I took notes, but I never do, and I just absorb stuff (even if I don’t actually remember it). So I can’t entirely remember precisely what she said, but it was all good stuff. Hardy took notes and I’ll look them over later. Much of it was stuff I heard before and intuitive (for me at least), but it was much better to hear her tell it in the context of what she actually did, instead of theories. I wish we had more time though to specifically workshop NYRA’s drinking age campaign, which she intended to do. But we did get a good overview of basic ideas which is good for all the Vermont chapter folks in keeping this thing going.
The biggest bit of advice she had, that I took away from it, was that if we don’t think it’ll pass this year, we should just sit on the bill until we have the ground organization in place and really push to ram it through next year. She suggested holding on to all the cards we collected until next year. Hmmm. She made a good point, but I’m not sure which way I’d go on it. We do have the momentum now, and I do believe if we put on a bit of pressure we could get it out of committee. Whether we could get it actually passed this year…. probably not. Though if it goes down this year, would that totally stop it from being reintroduced next year? Hmm, maybe. She proposed an interesting idea, and probably a more patient course that we should be trying. I talked it out with Hardy and he talked it out with some other chapter folks, and they decided to keep moving forward with the campaign with the goal of getting it done this year. Sounds good.
Overall it was good and useful for me, and I hope it was even more helpful for the NYRA-Vermont members in attendence. The idea was sparked actually from a contact I have in Florida who contacted me after Brad’s December 31 appearance on Fox News. Bryan said he was very interested in the drinking age issue, and wanted to help us out. We talked for an hour at that point going over different ideas he had. I filed him away and called him again in the run up to the campaign to see if there was anything he could do to help. He said yes, he could consult us, and he could run a training seminar on Sunday. I didn’t think we needed much consulting, but the training sounded real interesting. There was a catch though, he wanted to charge us. As crazy as it seems now, I actually considered it for a second. But $600 or so to pay someone from out of state to give a training was seriously not worth it. But inspired by the idea, Hardy contacted Nancy, and that’s how the training came together. Nancy was awesome, and free, and I’m sure much better (because she actually lives/works in Vermont) than the Florida guy anyhow.
Meeting the other chapter members was good. Kevin was very articulate and passionate about the drinking age issue. He hasn’t done much with the campaign so far though, but he knows his stuff and would be great to do workshops or speeches on the issue at some point. I wish he were more involved. The Ryans didn’t say much at the meeting, but I know Heavenly has been great with scheduling tabling space for us these two weeks, and Jeremy has been great with the database and tech needs of the chapter.
Everyone went their seperate ways, and Dave and I headed back to HQ. We chilled a bit, then got back to work. I went online and did my various online things (check e-mail, talk on IM, check forums, etc) and I learned that the Washington state voting age bill was coming up for a hearing on Friday. Excellent news. Keith and Robert were very excited about it. Since I am totally busy in Vermont, I told them to both take care of it. Keith is going to get a press release out.
Its so great, yet also stressing, that NYRA is just exploding right now. We are absolutely the biggest and most active we have ever been. This both creates great opportunities and great problems. We are doing way more than we’ve ever done, which is amazing, yet everything we do just creates more work to be done, and we just don’t have the manpower to handle it all. We’ve got 20 times more people power than we did a year ago, but that’s still not as much as we need for this. It was interesting when Galen posted a notice to the forum saying he needed volunteers to help out with the phone banking Monday night, and like 30 seconds later Keith posted a notice saying he needed volunteers to help with the Washington voting age bill. Ahhh, so much to do, not enough people to do it. Even so, we have totally revolutionized the organization in the past few months with the number of people we do have. So many people working on so many things, all networking together. It is really beautiful.
What we need now more than ever is staff. I’ve now lived with a pseudo-NYRA field office for a week, and while its draining and stressful, and not a pace that I’d want to maintain constantly, I feel sooo good about it and about how much we’ve been able to accomplish in a short period of time. Having people together and working together and focused on a common goal is just amazing. With all the chapters coming up, and the regional staff, and many campaigns, and our tech needs, and the fundraising contest, and everything else, we NEED a full time staff to handle it all. We are like the little fire engine that could. It seems like we are getting more done, and going farther than organizations with many times our budget, our experience, and our number of volunteers. Yet despite our successes our lack of money and our lack of full time staff impose a SEVERE restriction on our potential. There is SO much more we could do, and so much more we NEED to do, but can’t because we don’t have the staff. To do that we need money. Lots of money. So please, I implore you, if you have any money at all, PLEASE donate it to the organization. Fifty bucks, a twenty, ten bucks, a five, heck even if you just have a doller, please donate it.
Ok, back to the day’s round up. Dave spent the evening working on stuffing a mailing that Hardy prepared to send out to bar and liquor store owners in the state inviting them to the fundraiser Jay was organizing on Friday night. While he worked on that (and earlier while he sang and then watched TV), I worked on writing a letter to the editor to the Morning Sentinel in Maine. The paper published an editorial that attacked me, and NYRA for our campaign in Vermont. Implying that I was a carpet-bagger who might next bring the campaign to Maine. And again repeating all the old, ageist bad information about lowering the drinking age. In any event, it was neat to have ruffled the feathers of a newspaper off in Maine even. So clearly people are paying attention, even a few non-Vermonters. Of course I’m not bad about their negative editorial, it gave us more press coverage and attention. As long as they print my response (and they’d have to be pretty damn spiteful not to, considering they called me out by name). I wrote it (took a while due to distractions) and sent it to Hardy to edit it. It was good, and we sent it off. Hopefully they’ll print it.
Then I wrote a script (that needed much editing by Hardy, cause my script sucked) for phone banking Monday night, and wrote up my daily update, and talked with Cathy.