Letter from a youth who met World Can’t Wait while attending the Van’s Warped Tour and has begun organizing for October 5th. Also, a report on tabling at one of the Warped Tour stops.
Hey,
Yeah, once I got home the first thing I did was jump on my computer to email you! I read the “call” over a few times and I think it’s a really strong way to get our point across to people for The World Can’t Wait.
As a matter of fact, I handed out ALL of my stickers and flyers out to people. It’s actually funny how it worked out. My friend and I went into Red Bank (I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the town, it’s located in central Jersey.. not too far from where Warped Tour was) and there’s this store called Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash where they sell comic books. Those are the guys from the movie Clerks 1 and 2 if you didn’t know; they own it and make appearances from time to time.
Well Silent Bob was there to do a meet and greet and there was a HUGE line wrapped around the entire town of Red Bank. My friend and I were there just to go shopping, but luckily I had my flyers and stickers with me in my bag. We both walked up and down the line, handing out the flyers and stickers to people. Not ONE PERSON was a George Bush fan, which made me so happy (haha). The majority of the people seemed really interested in learning more about The World Can’t Wait. I even got some compliments by older people for being brave enough to come up to them. I also mentioned almost every time that I’m only fifteen years old, and if I can make a difference then anyone else also has the power to. I ran out of flyers and stickers and I had people crowding me asking me for some, so I wrote down the website on their hands with a sharpie marker.
I’m not sure if I told you this, but a member of PETA. In my school, I want to start a group called “Young Voices” which basically is a bunch of people who will meet on certain days and just talk about anything and everything they think needs to be heard, and also start fundraising and organizing for October 5th.
Have a good night
A.M
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The scene at a stop on the Vans Warped tour is a strange one to those more than a few years out of High School: tens of thousands of mohawked, pierced, usually sunburned rebels ranging from about 11 years old to their early twenties roaming around, horseplaying, floating from stage to stage, blaring speaker to blaring speaker, mosh pit to violently jubilent mosh pit. It’s really something and the small crew of myself and a youth who’s been around World Can’t Wait since signing up and meeting us at last year’s NJ stop on the warped tour, fit right in.
One of the first things that happened when we got inside the gate was we
spotted Tim, the lead singer of Rise Against [ http://www.riseagainst.com/}, one of the headline bands on the tour. They have very politically charged lyrics that call out the war in iraq for what it is, and that get heard on radio stations coast-to-coast. We gave him a Call, and asked if he’d plug Oct. 5th from the stage. He had to bounce. His band’s set was starting in ten minutes. One of his bandmates towed him away on a
skateboard as he held onto the back of a motorcyle, and he was gone–until… exactly ten minutes later, as we were setting up, what do we hear? His voice over the massive PA telling people to come over to talk to us and to protest on October 5th.
We set up at a busy crossroads, since we were too late to have a table that day. no biggie. Youth flocked to us when they saw the Oct. 5 stickers. Everyone wanted to know: what happens on October 5th? There was a lot of discussion on whether bush is an idoit, or actually a war criminal who must be driven out. There was a lot of “the kids at my school don’t care about anything”–to which we replied, “well, you care, don’t you? And now that you’ve gotten a sense that there’s a real way you can act, you can get out and argue with them to join you! Here, sign up to stay in contact and start a chapter.” We had to walk a fine line between reaching out very broadly, and talking to people and signing them up.
These kids DID care. And we began to get a dynamic going where reality was contradicting the claims of some of the kids that their generation was apathetic. As the event was starting to end and Anti Flag’s throaty vocals could be heard over the pitter-patter of skateboarding shoes pounding pavement, teenage horseplay and collective raving at the excitment of the day, we set up at one of the exit points, handing out the Call and the call for October 5th, selling stickers, agitating about the regime’s culpability in the slaughter of Lebanon, its response to Katrina, its suppression of science and its moves toward wider war in the Middle East.
There must have been 15,000 youth who walked by us in the space of about 45 minutes.
We spotted a pack of incoming HS freshmen from NJ who we’d seen earlier who’d signed up to get involved. Immediately, they recognized us. I ask, “you guys doin’ anything?” “my mom has to pick us up in like half an hour.” “wanna join us?” “sure!” They’re ready to throw in. As I agitate and hand out the Call, two of them get out stickers for donations and periodically bring back sweaty, torn 1 and 5 dollar bills, as the other two wield a clipboard and the best arguements they can come up with for
why this movement is needed, and sign people up.
After a little while, I meet a pair of young women who seem perplexed at the idea of actually doing something about the Bush regime. One of them says, “man, you can’t stop them. there’s nothing we can do.” I respond to that sharply, saying, well, if you hate what the regime is doing, isn’t that a fucking copout?” She pauses, thinks for a second, and says, “gimme summa those stickers to sell.” She and her friend join the impromtu assemblyline of resistance on the spot.
After the crowds started to thin out, the two groups who’d joined up exchanged numbers and found out that they lived relatively close to each other. They were going to make plans to start organizing and getting word about October 5th out far and wide in their corner of New Jersey.