Subject: [againstslaughter] Action report 6/23/04 -
Roanoke Valley Horse Show and the assault on Goodlatte
Hi Friends of the Horses,
Your team in Roanoke has some exciting news. Today, two letters to the
editor complaining about Goodlatte hijacking HR857 and from LOCAL people
appeared in the Roanoke Times (the biggest paper in Bob's district).
They were below a political cartoon. The cartoon was a politician trying
to raise money while chickens were "coming home to roost" on him.
The chickens had names like "Lies", "Deceit",
"Rancor", etc. Here are the links to the letters (look
down the page several letters):
One of these letters was from a person who helped the team man the table, but
whom I have yet to meet. We believe the other was from a person who
visited the table and picked up the information. As you can see, both
letters are well written and show a knowledge of the situation. This in a
paper that has almost never had a cross word directed at Goodlatte! Now,
three letters in 4 days!
As if this was not enough to give Bob indigestion, the weekly paper in
Rockbridge county ran a paid ad by Anne Russek (a member of our team). The
ad showed a foal laying upright with its legs tucked under it on a dinner plate
with a place setting on either side. The ad said "This is how Bob
Goodlatte views our horses!". It then went on to explain his antics.
Traffic at the table escalates every day, and we have a new team member.
Today was slow in the afternoon, but very busy after 6PM. At one time we
had five of us at the table and often we were addressing two or three groups of
people at the same time. We have now sold almost 50 T-Shirts, and they are
appearing all over the show and area. If you haven't seen the design it is
posted in the Files Section of the againstslaughter group.
We have learned a lesson for others to take into account. Since the shirt
has a controversial political message, some people will buy it for their kids
knowing they can get the message out without being confronted themselves.
We ordered no small size and only 30 mediums. We are almost out of the
mediums for this reason.
Bear in mind that Friday and Saturday are the big nights. We have already
been gathering about 20 petitions a day from people in Bob's district and we
have been sending them to him. We are on our second page of email
addresses for our local action alert list! Additionally, a person dropped
bye and mentioned that she was a friend of one of Bob's office assistants.
Her friend had been complaining about the fact that she couldn't do anything for
all the calls about the "horse issue". PLEASE, EVERYONE CALL
THIS LADY UP AND ASK IF YOU CAN HELP HER!
Finally, there was an unrelated but interesting article in the paper about
Premarin. Now, in addition to causing blindness, deafness, heard disease,
and cancer, it may cause Alzheimer's disease! We can expect the Premarin
mares to be laid off in even greater numbers this year, so the issue of
slaughter is even more urgent.
These results are showing that if we make our plans carefully, coordinate our
resources, and execute these plans, we can do amazing things. Bear in mind
that this is only the beginning! There is much much more to come, and I
look forward to telling you folks about it as it comes to pass. The
support you are giving us from all over is giving us the ability to shine a
glaring light on this man and his treacherous actions. Like I say, we must
be prepared that he will tough it out and not budge. If so, we will lay
plans for his next two year term! The good news is that the longer it
takes Bob to give in on this, the more time we have to punish and humiliate him
by exposing his duplicity, unfortunately it is the poor horses that will pay for
this time. We must make his pain the aggregate of theirs! We must
keep the pounding pressure on him, and do it relentlessly. We are setting
a new paradigm for political action and we must continue to think of new ways to
utilize our solidarity. I am so proud of our team and you wonderful
and selfless people!