My apologies for people waiting on the community's response to Monday night's post. I planned to pull from e-mails for that tonight.
However, when I arrived home (much later than I thought), I checked the site e-mail. Wally had a request (for a quote to be added to a post so he wouldn't have to look up the story at the New York Times which he is no longer visiting). The quote was added and Wally, heads up, because Shirley has scanned the article and e-mailed it to you. (Scanned a print copy of the paper. No hits were given to the Maslin review to reply to your request.)
While doing that (and adding Molly Haskins to that post -- thank you, Erika -- and correcting typos and mispelled words), I intended to do the community post immediately after.
But four people's e-mails came in (including one from Martha who will be quoted tomorrow) speaking of the fact that Mara Liasson's "reporting" on March 31st wasn't addressed. I honestly thought it would have been. With research help from Dallas and Shirley, the post was pulled together. (Thank you both.) (Especially Shirley who had only a rough quote from me and managed to track it down in a book.) Even with their assistance on research, it still took over three hours to pull that together.
So we'll hold off on the community post until tomorrow and my apologies for that. My apologies also for the additional links that haven't gone up. We'll try tomorrow but they'll be up by this weekend for sure.
And apparently they could wait today judging by the e-mails.
Gina: The good news, I spent the day addressing the topic of the Patriot Act with five people who knew nothing about it other than the name. The bad news, I didn't have time to e-mail or call my reps or to even hit the sites online that I usually visit.
Lloyd: I love a call to arms. My wife and I made a list of six people to invite over for a last minute dinner. The conversation never left the Patriot Act. Feel like the whole day went into that but it made a difference.
Keesha: I didn't just go in late, I took the day off. [Note, Keesha's referring to me rearranging my schedule and going in late today.] I called everyone I could think of and spent time with the "building blocks" getting the word out.
Jim (Third Estate Sunday Review): Ava and I spent the day all over campus handing out resource lists and talking about the Patriot Act. Jess & Ty will do the same tomorrow and Dona & Ava on Thursday. This is a battle we can win.
Erika: The photo copier was in overdrive today between patients (I wasn't comfortable shoving the non-work releated work off onto my assistant). I've got a standing appointment with friends every Wednesday night and I'll be handing out the photo copies there.
Eli spent most of the day on the phone with his rep's offices and with his family to get them involved. He wrote that he didn't even get to crack open the paper until late in the afternoon.
In his high school class, Wally spoke for ten minutes on the Patriot Act.
Rebecca (Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude) reports that her house is a disaster from three house parties today on this issue.
Lily e-mailed that she'd never called anyone who represented her on any level but she phoned the offices of all her Congressional reps today and "with sweaty palms and lots of stammering, let them know I'm opposed to extending the sunset provisions and that they need to be allowed to die." She says thank you to Dallas because reading of his call this morning encouraged her to get active.
KeShawn called all his Congressional reps. "Even my House Representative because I don't think we can afford to assume anyone's a sure thing on this till it's all gone down." KeShawn's House rep has been very vocal against the Patriot Act "but if you don't call in and say, 'Hey, I support you on this' minds can be changed."
Liang's throwing a get together tomorrow night to get the word out among her friends.
Zach spent two hours speaking with his father and utlizing the remarks of conservatives opposed to the Patriot Act. "At the end of it, Dad ended up doing an e-mail to say he was opposed to the Patriot Act."
There are so many e-mails and I haven't read them all. But what I have been able to read speaks of passion and involvement so congratulations to everyone. The ones quoted above either gave permission for full quotes or noted what could be quoted. (Eli doesn't like to be quoted but he's fine with being summarized.) By all means, share what you're doing via e-mails and if you also want to share with the community, note that in your e-mails.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
I'll be up in three hours to work out and then work on the Times post. I mention that to give you a "don't expect much" heads up.
