Going forth for the Fourth on the Fourth
Posted by Thomas Nephew on July 5th, 2008
Near Philadelphia and Maple, July 4th (photo by
Michelle Bailey). Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew
Once again, I rented some “Minuteman”/colonial town crier type duds and joined the Takoma Park Fourth of July parade and spectacle. I had about a thousand little 4 by 5 fliers with phone numbers for Senators Cardin, Mikulski, and (sigh) Obama, urging them to vote against the FISA Amendment Act. Here’s a reproduction and text version of the flier (4 to a page) I used, which quoted the 4th Amendment as well. The text is from something I ran across at the mybarackobama.com site about this issue, I just rearranged it a bit. (For incoming visitors, more specific information about the issue — joining the mybarackobama.com group, links to the ACLU, etc. — is in the prior post, Celebrate the Constitution this 4th of July!)
Both my spouse Crickey and my friend (and fellow impeachment activist) Michelle Bailey came along to help pass out the fliers; Michelle also snapped some photos like the one here.
Some notes: people — even Obama supporters with buttons or stickers — were disappointed in Obama’s reversal on this. The phrase that helps the most with recognizing the issue is “telcom immunity” — maybe Takoma Park is exceptional, but that got pretty high “issue recognition,” to coin a phrase.
As anyone knows who’s done this kind of thing more than once, you wind up getting a “rap” down if you didn’t already have one — some stock phrases to get across what the issue is about. Not saying it’s golden, but one thing that worked was this:
“…telcom immunity is a terrible idea looking back” — thumb one way — “…we’ll never find out what happened. And it’s and even worse idea looking forward” — thumb other way — “some other company, under some other president — asked to do something sketchy? They’ll think to themselves ‘why not — phone companies got away with it.’
I also talked with people about how the bill threatens the Fourth Amendment (in my opinion) by settling for a judge authorizing protocols for “computer dragnets” rather than insisting on probable cause for a specific person and reason.
In addition to “thanks for doing this” from many parade watchers, I got good reactions from parade participants and local politicians Jamie Raskin, Heather Mizeur, George Leventhal, and Tom Hucker, so that was a plus as well. Raskin and Mizeur are delegates to the Democratic Convention in Denver (Obama, “super” who’s endorsed Obama, respectively).
I had a blast; I like doing this kind of thing — whether in costume or not. Thanks again to Michelle and Crickey for joining me, and for the great photos they took; slideshow here.
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UPDATE, 7/6: eRobin works the crowds in Philadelphia about the FISA Amendment Act.
Category: Post. Tags: Constitution, fisa, fisaamendmentact, maryland, selected, surveillance.
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July 6th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Very nice!!!
And I am with you, my brother.
July 6th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Thanks, eRobin! Great to see you!
July 7th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
[...] back from the parade, I ran into a neighbor who asked why the costume. Explained about FISA, and he asked “So, you’ve given up on impeachment?” So I [...]
July 7th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
“Here’s a reproduction of the flier (4 to a page) I used, which quoted the 4th Amendment as well.”
Am I blind again, or did you forget to put in the link?
July 7th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
That’s funny, I thought I’d caught and fixed that myself. Here it comes. Ugly though, looks better in color, and the table layout didn’t survive the transition to Google Docs either.
September 3rd, 2010 at 2:18 pm
[...] issues such as this, which in turn can pressure government to uphold our constitutional rights. Thomas Nephew took the opportunity to spread the word about FISA at the Fourth of July parade in Takoma Park, MD. [...]