Two Million Too Many National Vigil Day

Thoughts from Kevin Zeese, President of Common Sense for Drug Policy and advisor to The November Coalition

Friends:
Bravo to Nora, Tom, November Coalition volunteers, board members and vigil leaders. You all did a fantastic job on February 15th. It is eye-popping to see the extraordinary work you are doing. I am proud to be associated with each of you.

Forty-three VIGILizing cities! Over 30 states! Thousands of people involved nationally, and this is just the beginning. Imagine where we can be next year by building now on this success.

Our efforts to put a public face on opposition to the drug war's reliance on prisons as a method of drug control will be a key deciding factor in ending our government's insane and destructive drug strategy. The fact that people are willing to stand in public and protest a policy that results in 25% of the world's incarcerated population confined in the USA-land of the free-is a bold public statement.

In order to have the most desirable impact, this success needs to be followed by expansion of the vigil project. We need to be consistently out there - on the street - expanding the number of vigils and increasing the numbers of people involved in each vigil.

As my colleague Robert Field says, "We need to go from strength to strength".

Vigils at 43 sites provide an incredible opportunity to learn from our successes, frustrations and failures. This is the time to share experience among ourselves in order to take full advantage of the lessons to be drawn from February 15th- what worked, what didn't?

What drew the media to your vigil? How did the small vigils handle being small, and how small is acceptable? What strategies were most effective at getting people out? What events around the vigil were most effective and least effective-press conferences, forums, parties? Was being part of a national day of vigils important-should we strive for more national vigil days? How long does it take to get a vigil organized?

Please feel encouraged and welcome to share these questions with your family, friends and colleagues in order to get their input.

I know there are other issues that should be discussed which some of you discovered while organizing or participating in a vigil. Now is the time to share our successes and frustrations so we can build this into a national movement that can't be ignored!

Congratulations, once again, to everyone who worked on the Two Million Too Many National Vigil.