DOWN THE ROAD

Lisa Savage and Steve Burke print Bring Our War $$ Home T-shirts during the WERU Radio's Maine Grassroots Media Conference

I drove north early yesterday morning so I could make it in time to hear artist Robert Shetterly (Americans Who Tell the Truth) speak at the opening of the WERU community radio sponsored Grassroots Media Conference in Unity.

It was a full day of workshops and talks about how to expand the growing network of alternative media throughout our state. It appeared that at least 75 people were there and I was happy to be amongst some of the best organizers and activists in the state. The food was also really good - most of it donated by local organic farmers.

One workshop I attended was "Why we need a regular news/analysis publication in Maine and how we can create one" lead by Larry Dansinger. About 30 people came to this workshop so it was clear that the subject was one that was high on people's priority list. I suggested a statewide Internet vehicle was needed where people representing many of our disparate groups could post articles about their work or calendar events. But for it to work we'd all have to promote it widely. One woman suggested a cooperative be organized to run it. I volunteered to serve on a committee to explore the idea.

CodePink Maine's coordinator Lisa Savage, Mark Roman and Steve Burke set up a Bring Our War $$ Home T-shirt making operation in the lobby of the conference where all day they banged out four different designs onto T-shirts. Steve used to be in the T-shirt business and had a bunch of left-over shirts that he sold for $1 each. It was great to see so many people taking a shirt home with one of the four different Bring Our War $$ Home designs that were available.

Today I do a radio interview after lunch and then we are driving our first Care-a-Van load of people from here down to Portland for the "It's time for light" gathering around Back Cove to call for an end to war. It begins at dark (6:30 pm) so we'll all turn our flashlights on and hopefully have enough people show up so we can circle all the way around the cove.

For the next month I'll be traveling around the state from local event-to-event in a van loaned to us by Maine Veterans for Peace leader Peggy Akers. I imagine I'll be blogging about many of the events and I'll be wearing one of my two new T-shirts from yesterday.

See you down the road.