Updated- March 20th Day of Action!
February 13th, 2007This post was written by Diarmaid. You can read more posts by: Diarmaid or more posts in Events, Society News
Here are the latest plans for the mass action card hand-in:
We will have a whole day of action on Tue 20 March.
The overall aim is to get Benn’s head straight on AIDS before the G8 Development Minister’s meeting and to win the support of more MPs to push the UK government to take action!
The date is set and Benn is booked for an hour. Now, we’ve got to get as many groups to London as possible as well as getting everyone to invite their MPs to the event and book them for a lobbying session in the afterwards. We can double the numbers of MPs by everyone booking their Uni + home MPs.
The event is a joint event with other members of the Stop AIDS Campaign coalition. Please get in touch with other groups campaigning on HIV/AIDS on your campus (e.g. P&P, Medsin/Pharmaware/UNYSA) to coordinate things like coming to London, booking MPs, etc.
There is money available for travel expenses and we’ll provide food and drinks for the day, but we need to know roughly how many people of each group are coming, so please get in touch with me via email of phone ASAP!!!!
We will draft an invitation for MPs, which you can use, as soon as we get the confirmation which room we will be in.
Stop AIDS Day of Action: Outline
Date: Tuesday 20 March
General outline of day to be:
• 11ish-1: meet, organise, prep and ‘gee up’- decorate the room!
• 1-2pm: hour with Benn, including speakers, Q&A, presentation of action cards, time for him to meet campaigners, and for us to grill him.
• 2-3pm: MPs encouraged to stay back and network with constituents, can perform some lobbies here.- (I’ll email a draft invite letter for you to send)
• 3-5pm: Meetings with MPs who cannot be at meeting.- arrange to meet and have a cup of tea with your MP. This is probably more important than getting them to the formal meeting.
• 5/5.30pm: photo shoot and stunt!
Important next steps- what you need to do to make this happen and by when!!
ASAP
Letter of invitation for MPs Click here to download a template letter to invite your MP to the Benn talk and to meet with you afterwards. Please adapt to make it more relevant to your group- this is just an outline. MPs are pretty busy people so try and send this off as soon as you can. This is an opportunity to follow up on meetings you’ve had earlier this year. Also may as well take advantage of having 2 MPs- one from home and one from Uni and invite both.
1st March- THIS THURSDAY COMING!
Send me any photos you have of your campaigning activities- balloon releases, stalls, eyeball stunts etc. (Southampton it would be great to have copies of your WAD photo exhibition). I will burn these all onto CD and we will put them into a photo collage that will be displayed at the Benn talk.
Friday 2nd March
Travel- We need to know who is coming ASAP. The original deadline was 23rd February. Obviously we’ve missed this, so by Friday can you give me a list of names and indicate if you’d like us to reimburse travel costs- if so how much you think the tickets/ petrol will be. The Stop AIDS Campaign have agreed to pay 80% of each person’s travel costs (if they are coming from outside of London) up to a maximum of £40 each. Please find the cheapest way possible so that more money is available to more people. Needless to say we will only be able to reimburse you on production of a receipt.
5th March
let me know how many action cards you have signed for the hand in to Benn and how you will get them to me.
13th March
I will need all action cards to be with me by 13th March. We are trying to get medium sized pill bottles made and will put the cards according to each group in these. (1000 cards per bottle) These will be labelled and you can write a personal message to Benn on each.
On the Day
Bring any visual displays you have, or get them to me if you can’t make it. We may or may not be able to put them all up on the day but it would be good to show Benn the kinds of things we’ve been doing.
Please email/phone me with any ideas you have and also post comments below so we can get a bit of a discussion going…
February 23rd, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Here are the ideas we brainstormed at the Training and Planning Day:
Meeting with Benn- More details/ideas:
• Visual display of pillcard petitions + shoes + case studies, pics, stats etc
• Area for groups to display what they have done.
• Area for photographer + backdrop- to give MPs an incentive to come- a beautiful picture of them with you for the local paper!
• Filming area – Youtube?
• Speakers could include Southern speaker + someone from the campaign + Benn- Ideas?
• See if can get photo display in parliament
• Invite Lords as well as MPs
• Photo stunt at end like Trafalgar Sq photo but needs a ‘twist’. German theme? Clock ticking? Emergency message (ambulance)?
At the Training and Planning Day on Saturday some really great ideas for the hand in and photo stunt came forward. See below for details. If I’ve missed anything please leave a comment and I’ll add it in.
Favourite ideas for decorating the room for the Benn talk:
- Photos of hands- 1 in 4 has a pill in.
- All the pill cards locked in a case/ cabinet. Give Benn the key to unlock the door.
- Thread all the pill cards together and hang them from the ceiling (would take some threading!)
- Huge egg timer at the back of the room to show that time is running out.
- Shoes theme not popular.
Favourite ideas for the photo stunt:
- Visually displaying 8000 of something.
- A die in with a gong, so every bang of the gong more people fall down.
- To repeat the eyeball idea from 2005, but replace with pills. – lots of small pills covered in red tape to represent generic drugs. These would have the cost displayed (£100) to illustrate clearly the price difference. These would some how be suspended out of reach with people holding their hands up to reach them.- Perhaps use fishing rods.
- In the middle would be a huge pill that would represent the brand named ARVs. Cost displayed (£10,000). No red tape held up by men in suits.
Other ideas to consider:
- Medical emergency theme
- Have pills surrounded by money
- Chained up pills
- Illustrate scale through eyes
- Tie people up.
- Tie the pills cards into individual bundles.
- Map showing distribution of ARVs and unmet need Using 2 colours.
- Scales with people vs. profit.- so dollar sign on one side, people sat on the other.