Art and Democracy - University of Minnesota

We produced this event to unite the worlds of social justice action and art on campus, build coalitions, and increase awareness of Democracy Matters on campus. We partnered with Substance and the Arts Quarter Collective. The venue was the Steak Knife, a small restaurant off campus with a small stage which brought the social justice scene to the night life scene of Dinkytown. We had students come in and out all night and we counted 150 heads at one point. Because there was no cover, students stopped by to check out the art and grab some good food and beer and listen to some of the music before heading out to other venues nearby. Our visibility also attracted people off the streets to come check it out. There is no way we would have reached as many people with an on-campus location.

One of the highlights of the nights actually started off as a disaster when a mic broke and a group of actors had no room on stage to perform a piece about the hunger struggle in America. They decided to move the play out to the parking lot and the audience followed them out. It was cold, but the performance was so moving it didn’t matter. The fact that it was a play about homelessness and hunger and it was performed in a parking lot added an element of ironic reality.

The planning of this event was difficult because we had no experience putting on an art show. We learned a lot and formed a new coalition with a student art group on campus that helped us with artistic direction. We had some no-shows for artwork and problems with getting funding for an event at a venue that serves alcohol but it was worth it in the end because we reached a new audience.

Sarah Emmel

Democracy Matters Campus Coordinator

University of Minnesota

NEC College Convention in New Hampshire

On November 27th - 30th I had the pleasure of attending the NEC College Convention in New Hampshire. Every presidential election year, college students gather in large numbers to learn more about the issues that are being discussed during the campaigns and to meet the candidates directly. Unfortunately, this year because of they way the primaries were scheduled, the convention had to take place during the month of November as opposed to in January, when it has traditionally taken place. As a result, there were not as many students and colleges as they would have liked. After all, this is the prime exam and final paper period for college students so I am sure that it was very hard for most people to make the trip.

Even though the numbers were low, I was still able to meet a lot of great people, some of the presidential candidates, attend some issue specific workshop, and help lead some workshops. On Wednesday, I manned a table at the Opportunity Fair, where I spoke with about twenty people, most of whom were in high school. After giving them the rundown on Democracy Matters and the money in politics issue, some of them even signed form letters to their senators asking them to support the Fair Elections Now Act. I was able to get 11 people in all to send letters.

The first workshop that I helped lead was called, "Student Organizing on Campuses," and I co-facilitated it with Maya Enista from mobilize.org and Ian Storrar from Common Cause. We had a great discussion with the 15 or so students who attended. We talked about there responses to the following two questions: 1. How frustrated are young people (15-30) about political issues that affect their lives (education, environment, health care, civil rights, the War in Iraq, etc.)? and 2. How political active and engaged are young people (15-30)? The interesting thing about these responses is the disconnect that was apparent. Essentially, students feel like their peers are frustrated and care a lot about a variety of issue but at the same time feel like they are not politically active. In an ideal world your level of political engagement would match your level of concern about specific issues. We talked about how the reason for this disconnect is the fact that money in politics makes our democracy an unfair process and turns people cynical. Until we address the money in politics issue, people will continually feel cynical and turned away by their own government. The students at the end felt like this was the best workshop they had attended during the convention. Sometimes people just want to share their own experiences and the learning comes from that.

The other workshop I helped out with was, "Public Financing of Campaigns: How Students Can Bring About Change." This was moderated by Dan Week from Just6Dollars.org. There were a lot of people on the panel. Not too many people attended this one, unfortunately, due to a dead time during the day. We did get a few people to sign and send some form letter though.

I attended two workshops: one was about forgiven foreign debt and the other was about health care. The foreign debt one was facilitated by two poeple from Jubilee USA Network, which is advocated for all foreign debt to be forgiven to the 67 most highly indebted developing countries. The other workshop was facilitated by New Hampshire for Health Care. The interesting bit of information I learned from this workshop is that the largest and fastest growing population on uninsured people are between the ages of 19-24.

Finally, I was able to ask some of the presidential candidates and/or the representatives questions about money in politics and the Fair Elections Now Act. First, I asked Joe Biden the following question: "Senator Biden, your life story is a testament to the fact that young people do care about a variety of political issues and that they can look to public service as a way to affect change, but a lot has change since you first won a senate seat at the age of 29. Young pepple look at policy that just doesn't make sense anymore: an expensive and deadly war that gives away billions of contracts to private firms like Halliburton and Blackwater, billions of dollars of farm subsidies that go to large corporate agribusinesses instead of family farms, and our efforts to bring about sound environmental policy is constantly being stonewalled by the big oil and gas industries. The one thing that ties all these things together is money in politics. How has the issue of money in politics changed since during your time in office and what are you doing to bring about a system of full public financing so we can make get big money out of politics?" The first words out of his mouth were, "This is the single most important issue you can focus on because, as you said, it affects everything that is done in Congress. Don't expect any significant policy changes until we can ensure that money no longer determines policy."

The second person to which I was able to ask a question was Senator Lindsey Graham who was there to represent John McCain. I praised him and McCain for being bi-partisan leaders in the Senate and working across the aisle, something that we need more of. Since John McCain a co-sponsor of the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) I asked if the two of them would be willing to take the next step to curb the big money influence in politics and support the Fair Elections Now Act. Senator Graham said that he was not in favor of full public financing, although his reasons for supporting BCRA are the very reasons the Fair Elections Now Act is needed. So I think he may be able to make a turn around.

I also got to ask Tom Tancredo a question about immigration; essentially calling him out for demonizing immigrants and turning the work immigrant into a bad work and how he does a disservice to himself and the debate by doing such things. Ian Storrar from Common Cause got Mike Gravel to sign the public financing pledge. And I got to see Ben Cohen (from Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream) give his presentation on the bloated Pentagon spending in the federal budget and his famous Oreo presentation.

All in all, this was a great experience. I wish there had been more students there but what are you going to do.

-peace-

Daryn Cambridge
Assistant Director
The Democracy Matters Institute

Diane Feinstein Lobby Day - University of San Francisco, CA

On November 15th, the Democracy Matter coordinators from the campuses of University of San Francisco, UC Davis, and San Francisco State University lobbied Diane Feinstein in her downtown office in San Francisco. We (Dallas Cole, Constance Gordon, and I) met with Feinstein’s aid and explained the basics of the Fair Elections Now Act. We refrained from asking for direct endorsement, but felt very good about relaying the important information so that Feinstein could make a knowledgeable decision when it comes time to vote on the Act. The aid, Assistant Field Representative John Murray, was very receptive and we were able to answer most of his questions.

We spoke about FENA from the perspective of political science college students who wish to first, vote for more clean election candidates right now because we believe they represent our interests better than dirty candidates and second, hope to have the option of running for office in the future because of the clean elections system. Also, we spoke about the connection between clean elections and the rise in women’s involvement in government. We believed that Feinstein would be particularly interested in this statistic because she supports women in politics.

Lacy Clark
Democracy Matters Campus Coordinator
University of San Franciso

Political Poetry Slam - UNC Charlotte, NC

The Political Poetry Slam on October 17th was a huge success for Democracy Matters! A little over 100 people attended and we had about thirty artists share their political work. The capacity of the Ritazza Café is eighty and there was standing room only. The purpose of the event was to allow students who would not normally be interested in politics, advocacy, pro-democracy movements, etc. to express their opinions in an unorthodox way. The slam brought unlikely participants in the political process to the front stage of action. Many of the students spoke about Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration, the war in Iraq, education, the 9/11 attacks, and many other issues they felt were important in today's society.

We began planning for the poetry slam a little over one month in advance. We worked with another student organization on campus called CHAIN Reaction. They encourage cultural diversity through various topics from religion to politics in hopes of promoting student unity on campus. We invited two spoken word teams to campus, held sign-ups throughout the week, and allowed general open mike for any students who wanted to come on stage. We funded the event (publicity, invited guests, equipment, etc) with funding from the Student Government Association.

One of the challenges that we faced was official student organization approval. We were approved in the same week that we went before student senate to request funding. However, before approval, the process was delayed by over three weeks because of system errors and delayed paper work processing by the university. We were also worried that the slam would not represent what it was intended for as far as political content. However, the artists exceeded expectations and really shared their perspective of our political system.

I believe the campaign was so successful because we had committed students working to advocate the necessity of active student participation in politics. We discovered that a lot of students are interested in the political changes that affect them; but, they are not given an outlet or ‘way to’ get involved. The slam was an opportunity to voice concern in a way that interest them—through the arts.

I feel as if the focus of the campaign was to inspire students to actively participate in our political system even if that act is simply exercising their first amendment right and expressing their current concerns about our system. Some ideas were extreme, bias, bitter, concerned, fed-up, and frustrated. These were the current feelings towards our politics expressed by students. As a result, a couple of the questions to be asked are: Why do we have these feelings? How can we participate in a way that will provoke change? It then becomes DM’s job to educate the student body on ways of promoting change and voicing concerns. Campaign finance reform is the first step to active reform in our current political system. The students thoroughly enjoyed the event. We received positive feedback, and were asked when we would be hosting the next Political Poetry Slam. Apparently, the students (more than originally thought) have much to say about the current state of our political system.

More than anything, the campaign inspired me to continue my advocacy without worry that students are not taking an active enough interest in the issues that affect them. Give them a channel, and they will speak.

Francswai Davis
Campus Coordinator
UNC Charlotte

Iraq for Sale Forum - LA Valley Community College, CA

On November 6th, we held a forum on the moneyed interests that are playing a major role in the War in Iraq. I was extremely pleased to see such a big turn out of students at our event. We had about 250 students come. It was a pleasant surprise to see so many students, because usually just as many community people come to our events as students, but this time the majority of people were students.

I think that our event was a huge success because our forum was about money in politics at its worse, when war profiteers create private mercenaries. This subject of private mercenaries is such a shocking reminder of why we need Clean Money Fair Elections because almost every minute someone is killed in the name of capital by our tax money being misused by private legislatures helping out their private corporate business partners.

In order to have people understand why it is so important that we create a real democracy for once and for all with Clean Money Fair Elections we thought that it was dire to bring military veterans to our school that were effected first hand by the malevolent war profiteers.

For our program we first showed the trailer of “Iraq for Sale”, by Robert Greenwald, which is a great depiction of the problem of private money in politics. We followed the trailer with Professor Pete Lopez who spoke about the history of war profiteering by the U.S.A and how it has gotten predominantly worse and how we are in the biggest debt we have ever been in history because of our military industrial complex.

Then we had ex U.S. Army Colonel, Ann Wright speak, who resigned from the military after 29 years of service to protest the war in Iraq. She is also an advocate of Clean Money Fair Elections and during her speech she said, “Democracy does matter, and that’s why we need more groups such as “Democracy Matters”. She also spoke about the problem of the “No bid” private contracts in places like Iraq and New Orleans, and after her speech she got a standing ovation.

We also had an Iraq Veteran named Edgar Cuevas speak at our event. He is a part of “Iraq Veterans Against the War”, as well as being a new member of “Democracy Matters” at LA Valley College. He hit home to the hearts and minds of people in the audience sharing his stories of first hand experience of interactions with private mercenaries like “Blackwater”. In his speech he stated, “It is important to have cleanly elected officials to represent us, so we can avoid getting into unjust wars based on lies”.

Then Andrea Barrera, (who is a DM member at LAVC), and I gave a presentation about the cost of the Iraq War and Clean Money Fair Elections. We had a panel discussion after that with a lot of good questions from the audience and we had a good amount of interest from students wanting to get involved with Democracy Matters.

It was a great experience and we were thanked by many people for putting on the event.

Anitra Wetzel
LA Valley College
Democracy Matters Chapter Leader

Ed Garvey and Jack Lohman Speak on Clean Elections - UWM, WI

On November 7th @ 6:00pm, Democracy Matters at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee held an event called "Ending the Gangsterization of Politics, Non-Partisan Style" w/ guest speakers Ed Garvey and Jack Lohman. The event was highly attended and co-sponsored by the American Democracy Project, WISPIRG, fightingbob.com, and wiscleanelections.org. Check out the video below to see clips from the event.



Dan Jackel
Campus Coordinator
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

"Buy My Vote" Gameshow - IUPUI, IN

For National Week of Action, our IUPUI DM Chapter wanted to do something fun and interactive with the students. We reserved about a month in advance a table and a few chairs for Nov. 14^th and Nov. 15^th from 10:00 am-1:00 pm in a central location of campus where many students hang out. We then met as a small committee of about 5 to brainstorm ideas. We knew we wanted to capture the interests of students in a fun way that would get our message across, so one of our members came up with the idea of a game show.

We tossed ideas back and forth and decided to name the game show “Buy My Vote.” We wanted to do an auction format in which someone would play the emcee, two students play politicians, and another student play a corporation. In order to get IUPUI students involved, we planned to ask them to participate by giving them the Democracy Dollars so they could bid against the corporation for the politicians vote. At this point, we were still a little fuzzy on the plans, but we decided we would present this to all of our members at our next meeting a week before the events to hash out the details.

A week before the events, we had a regular meeting where we discussed a few more details for the game show, and we asked if anyone wanted to commit to certain roles. We planned what we could say, and I printed off an example of a script from a street theater put on by another DM campus that we could work off of and make it our own. At the meeting, we made props for the game show, such as two “for sale” price tags to hang around the politicians’ necks, a big check in the amount of $50 million for the corporation, and a poster displaying the title of the game show.

A day before the events began, I sent reminder emails to those who said they would help out and to all students to ask them to come out and support us. A couple people who had volunteered were unable to attend, so we knew we needed to keep things flexible in order for them to work.

On Nov. 14^th, we had about 8 members show up to help with the game show. We reorganized who was going to play what role, got out our props, and commenced to get IUPUI students to play. We started out a little slow and tried working out the kinks so that students would bid against the corporation for the politicians, but students were a little confused by the process. We modified and simplified our original game plan so that students would have to choose just one politician rather than bid for one against the corporation.

The new game show began with us asking students to play a quick game that would only take 2 minutes of their time. The emcee would then ask about an issue they cared about and asked the student to vote for one politician after a short debate about that issue. Once the student announced who he/she would vote for, the corporation sneaks in and presents the $50 million check to the candidate and states they will give the politician their money only if they do the exact opposite they just promised the student they would do.

The students who participated got the message, and thought the skit was pretty funny. We told them about DM and asked them to sign the FENA petition to support legislation that would stop this problem. We had around 40 students in total play the game show, which drew in quite a large crowd. Our members really got into their roles, which I think helped keep up the excitement and draw others to watch.

On Nov. 15^th, we were a few students shy of putting on the whole production of the game show, so we decided to actively ask students to sign the FENA petition. Overall both days were pretty successful, with the game show probably attracting the most attention. This event was also a good way for our members to get involved and to feel empowered by getting other students to care about clean elections. This event was a lot of fun, and I think we did some great work, too!

Caridad Ax
Campus Coordinator
Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)