[Peace] Join our national leafleting campaign. (fwd)

[patton paul]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 18 Feb 2003 06:07:13 -0000
From: "Zack Exley, MoveOn.org" <moveon-help at list.moveon.org>
To: Paul Patton <ppatton at uiuc.edu>
Subject: Join our national leafleting campaign.

Dear MoveOn Member,

This week we're launching our nationwide anti-war leafleting project,
a key part of our grassroots PR campaign. MoveOn volunteers have
already formed over 400 leafleting teams in 44 states. Join or create
a leafleting team in your area today, and help us build even more
momentum against the war:

http://moveon.org/leaflets?id=1051-483317-XsMA.gZ9Yj6KF_xHTBGPmA

This is a very hopeful moment: this weekend the world definitively
said "No" to war. There were massive protests on every continent.
London's was the largest in that city's history. In America, over one
million people said "No" to war at dozens of demonstrations despite
snow and bitter cold in many cities. And this time, the media noticed.
Pundits are even beginning to ask if war is possible in the face of
such strong opposition. (See below for an example.)

Polls have shown that when people have the facts, they oppose the war.
Our leafleting project is designed to give people the facts, person to
person, in hundreds of cities and towns. A majority of Americans
support giving the inspections time to work. Nevertheless, many have
accepted key false claims of the Administration's case for war.

To debunk those claims, MoveOn members are handing out fact-sheets in
hundreds of communities this week. On our Web site, you can locate and
join leafleting groups near you. Or you can create your own, and allow
other MoveOn members in your area to join.

There are already over 400 leafleting meet-ups scheduled -- and we
haven't even really gotten started. Please join or create a leafleting
team today:

http://moveon.org/leaflets?id=1051-483317-XsMA.gZ9Yj6KF_xHTBGPmA

Suggestions and resources for leafleting are available on the Web
site.

If 10,000 people participate, we'll be able to distribute up to a
million leaflets. More importantly, we will be showing others in our
community that they are not alone in their opposition to the war. This
will have an enormous impact.

See you leafleting!

Sincerely,
--The MoveOn Team
  Carrie, Eli, Joan, Peter, Wes, Zack
  February 17, 2003


PS: Here's an update on how our grassroots PR campaign is unfolding
nationwide...

1)  A Million Signs -- ACTIVE NOW
    Go to http://www.moveon.org/inspectionswork/
    (Volunteers have pledged to post 57,000 signs and placards so
    far.)

2)  Leafleting -- ACTIVE NOW
    Over 400 leafleting teams already formed.

3)  Billboards and Buses -- SUCCESS
    We raised enough money to put up billboards and bus ads in several
    cities. Viacom at first refused to place our ad, but calls from
    MoveOn members convinced them otherwise.

4)  Ads in 100+ Newspapers -- STAY TUNED

5)  A Really Cool Coalition Effort -- TO BE ANNOUNCED FEB 18TH

---
Here's a great example of the impact of this weekend's protests:

"A New Power in the Streets"
By PATRICK E. TYLER
New York Times, Feb. 17 2003

http://nytimes.com/2003/02/17/international/middleeast/17ASSE.html

"WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 - The fracturing of the Western alliance over
Iraq and the huge antiwar demonstrations around the world this weekend
are reminders that there may still be two superpowers on the planet:
the United States and world public opinion."

"...In his campaign to disarm Iraq, by war if necessary, President
Bush appears to be eyeball to eyeball with a tenacious new adversary:
millions of people who flooded the streets of New York and dozens of
other world cities to say they are against war based on the evidence
at hand."

"...War, like politics, is affected by psychology and momentum. The
strong surge in momentum the Bush administration felt after Secretary
of State Colin L. Powell's Feb. 5 presentation to the Security Council
on the case for war has been undermined by at least four converging
negatives.

"The most obvious is the rupture in relations between Mr. Bush and
some of his principal partners in Europe: France and Germany, now
joined by Russia, China and a growing list of other countries. Just
weeks ago, it seemed that Mr. Bush was successfully coaxing France and
Germany into the war camp, especially after one of the chief United
Nations weapons inspectors, Hans Blix, delivered a negative report on
Jan. 27 on Iraqi compliance.

"But the swell of popular opposition to war across Europe, the second
negative, plus the corrosive effects of the hawkish jibes that Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have hurled across the
Atlantic, have only roiled the waters further. Washington discovered
just how deeply Western unity had been sundered when it asked for
defensive NATO deployments to Turkey to protect that front-line state
from Iraqi intimidation - a request that brought opposition and
contentious debate that were resolved today."

"...Mr. Powell promised new intelligence on connections between Iraq
and Al Qaeda, but then did not provide it, at least within public
view. And he did not respond to Mr. Blix when the arms inspector
challenged one point of the American intelligence briefing of Feb. 5."

"...an exceptional phenomenon has appeared on the streets of world
cities.... politicians and leaders are unlikely to ignore it."

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