Getting the message out.
Bastard Nation is good. I mean really good. We have just come off of a swell, but small, conference. Energetic speakers, great entertainment, haute cuisine in the French Quarter. Our traditional conference demonstration (organized by the captivating Kenny Tucker), brought out more media than we’ve ever had, which of course is the point. We hrumffed around with pretty signs, chanted smart and witty slogans, and gave the media articulate speakers and quality sound bytes. Despite “bastard” being deemed a family-offensive word, they loved us. We got our message across, just below the latest Bush directive. We were smart, organized, and mediagenic.
I first noticed how really good we are when I began to notice how really bad others are at getting out their message and their masses—not to mention what their masses do once they are gotten out. A little over a year ago I went downtown to observe a Christian Coalition of Ohio shut-down-the-statehouse protest over an issue so trivial only the most arcane rightwinger could comprehend. This demo had received a good deal of advertising through Internet action alerts (albeit, rambling and poorly written) and Christian radio. To hear the local Falwells talk, dozens of chartered buses from places like Celina, Wapakoneta, and Ashtabula were rushing the Outraged to the Seat of All Sin. I arrived about 15 minutes early, spotted two or three sign carriers and no yellow church buses (which should have alerted me that something was amiss), and ambled over to City Pharmacy, half a block away, to pick up a box of BC’s. I couldn’t have been gone for more than seven minutes. When I returned, our warriors were packed up and heading home. What happened? I never found out. The demonstration disappeared mysteriously off the CCO’s web page; no report sent out to the faithful. I went home and emailed a friend that the CCO should hire me to plan their protests.
Non-events are not limited to the Biblical America. An anti-war protest at the University of Oregon held only a few days after 9/11 produced the following: middle-aged women in granny dresses and head scarves (in solidarity with Afghan women) shouting, “Rise, Earth, Tribe” whatever that means; earnest young men suggesting we embrace Osama and feel his pain; small children bouncing signs sermonizing, Love Is All We Need. And then there were the puppets…. Oh, never mind! At least a couple of anarchists, dressed as Death, brought a certain irony to an otherwise embarrassing show of bad taste and even badder politics. This fiasco was followed a month later by a group of about 30 pacifists meandering a circuitous route through the boonies to Autzen Stadium where Oregon was in the process of getting trounced by Stanford. Caught short on clever anti-war chants, the clueless muttered, “Go Ducks, War Sucks.” Buzzcuts snarled back the always amusing, “Get a job!” A few months later at the Against Patriarchy conference on campus, attendees angsted over gendered bathrooms and meat eaters. Victimhood was declared a Perfect State Of Being.
Don't even get me started on the Franklin County Democratic Party! Last week, with its usual ineptness, the bigwigs didn’t bother to notify the party faithful until 12 hours before the event that the entire November state ticket was coming to town for a rally at the Statehouse. Outside of the press and bright young things handing out press packets and prattling on cells, the rally was pretty empty.
And the point is? By fluke or design, Bastard Nation from the beginning has been able to organize response. Meaningful focused response. The Secrets and Lies educational pickets, NARD, M58, Reg Day, The Hague, open records campaigns in Alabama, California, Missouri, New Hampshire, baby dumps, Beasty Bill, our annual conference protests. David Ansardi, Anita Field, Cyn Holub, Damsel Plum, and Kevin McCarty, often with little advance notice, have gone above and beyond the call of duty researching obscure legal points and writing and distributing action alerts and press releases.
I am especially pleased with the response we’ve generated lately—much thanks to Jean Uhrich for her grueling work-- against California’s SB 1614, a noxious proposal that would remove the California Birth and Death Indices from pubic view after nearly 100 years in the pubic forum. I encourage you to keep up the good work, not only there but also in every state, through one-on-one meetings with lawmakers, phone calls, faxes, and emails and taking it to the streets. You do make a difference!
By early fall (winter at latest) we hope to have finished the revamp of the Bastard Nation web page to make it even easier for you to let your voice be heard. We are working on exciting changes. Our Media Room will include press release templates, bullet point information sheets on various topics, downloadable protest signs, demon chants, a media directory, and more to help you “personalize” your message. If you have any suggestions on how we can make lobbying and media contact easier for you, or if you’d like to be part of the revamp team, please drop me a line.
Finally, for those of you who would like to see our New Orleans media coverage, Kenny Tucker and Christy Little have put together a video. Contact Kenny at ktucker@dkslaw.com for details.
(This feature appeared in the Summer 2002 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)
Copyright 2003 Marley Greiner
All Rights Reserved