Campaign for Liberty parade report - St. Peter, MN

[Mahkato]

We promoted CfL today in the 4th of July parade in St. Peter, Minnesota (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%2C_Minnesota). It was pretty awesome.

We had 16 adults, 11 kids, and 2 dogs participating. Of the adults, we had 1 driver, 5 literature-passers, and 4 walking sign holders. The other 6 adults were on the trailer, holding signs and/or watching the kids and throwing candy. We borrowed a sound system for the day, so my wife and 5-year-old daughter sang patriotic songs (America the Beautiful, Battle Hymn of the Republic, and Star Spangled Banner) for most of the parade, interspersed with patriotic music from an MP3 player when they needed a break.

The whole parade was about 16 blocks, and there were probably 8 to 10 thousand people there. People farther away from the curb were actually ASKING us for literature, so we had to work quickly to stay caught up with our unit. Our supply of 2,000 pieces started to run low at block 12, and we finally ran out at block 15. Click here to see what we passed out. (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=142905)

I'll hopefully have a few more photos to post later (taken by others) but these are the ones I have right now:

Getting ready:
http://www.ronpaulgateway.com/wiki/images/a/a7/Gettingready2.jpg

Waiting to start:
http://www.ronpaulgateway.com/wiki/images/0/03/Gettingready3.jpg

The signs:
http://www.ronpaulgateway.com/wiki/images/1/1e/TwoCfLsigns.jpg

http://www.ronpaulgateway.com/wiki/images/a/a4/4signs.jpg

http://www.ronpaulgateway.com/wiki/images/4/45/Allsigns.jpg

Making the signs (click here for more info) (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=144024):
http://www.ronpaulgateway.com/wiki/images/c/c8/MakingCfLsign.jpg

The literature (click here for more info) (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=142905):
http://www.ronpaulgateway.com/wiki/images/0/0f/Cfl_front.jpg

[ItsTime]

looks fun! nice work guys

[Jeremy]

awesome!

we're expanding farther than the presidential campaign =)

[Deborah K]

I love this!

[ItsTime]

I wish I had thought of doing this. Man I am really happy right now. great work. really, great work. I hope others did the same all throughout the country. Maybe we should start plans for a massive CFL participation parade for the next big holiday? Make this a normal thing. great great great idea.

[Mahkato]

awesome!

we're expanding farther than the presidential campaign =)

It's really nice to do this since it's not tied to a person's name anymore. Names, and the parties they're associated with, can be polarizing, and people shut off to you. With CfL, they have a chance to approach it with an open mind.


I wish I had thought of doing this. Man I am really happy right now. great work. really, great work. I hope others did the same all throughout the country. Maybe we should start plans for a massive CFL participation parade for the next big holiday? Make this a normal thing. great great great idea.

Why don't you tell us how you really feel? :p In my area of the country at least (not sure about elsewhere) just about every small town around has some sort of festival and/or parade at some time during the summer. We've done a couple of other parades (smaller than this one though) and have a couple more to do. Even if you don't have enough people to have a unit in the parade, you can still walk the parade line before the parade gets started and pass stuff out. People are sitting there with nothing to do anyway, so you might as well give them something to read!

[libertarian4321]

Good idea. I hope some of those folks will be joining us on September 2nd!

[Nirvikalpa]

Is that a Sheltie I see?... I have a sheltie :)

Great work! The signs looked great - glad to hear you RAN OUT of things - shows people were genuinely interested!

[speciallyblend]

awesome guys, if you want ,watch the freedomfest live feed here around 12 noon at www.stickam.com/speciallyblend pretty good feed , tell your friends check it out good entertainment and speakers today at 12 noon

[Jeremy]

Is that a Sheltie I see?... I have a sheltie :)

Great work! The signs looked great - glad to hear you RAN OUT of things - shows people were genuinely interested!

I have a sheltie too :D

[luaPnoR]

Jeeze the sheltie's pretty popular! :) Her name is Tasha. The Black lab pup is ours. Her name is Star. She's 4 months old and my daughter named her Star "Just like the American flag!". I think we have an activist on our hands. :) She's the one that sang with me on the float. You can see her in the second picture far to the left wearing the red, white and blue dance costume. You should have seen the people cheering and clapping for her, I almost cried. She made me so proud. :)

[Mahkato]

We might be adding a sixth parade in August. Someone in a town 45 minutes from here saw this thread and now they want to do a parade too!

Parades are easy and fun. YOU WANT TO DO ONE IN YOUR TOWN.

[ronpaulhawaii]

We might be adding a sixth parade in August. Someone in a town 45 minutes from here saw this thread and now they want to do a parade too!

Parades are easy and fun. YOU WANT TO DO ONE IN YOUR TOWN.

You guys absolutely rock, great job :D

[PlzPeopleWakeUp]

nt

[Mahkato]

Since someone asked, the stickers we used (http://www.partypro.com/Itemdesc.asp?ic=9034689540175D) were $9.35 per package (48 sheets, 15 stickers each). We cut each sheet into four 2-sticker pieces and one 3-sticker piece, to get 384 handouts' worth of stickers from each package. That's under 3¢ each. We then stapled each sticker piece to the handout. For future parades, we're going to have some handouts without stickers to give to people without kids, especially those sitting farther back from the curb. This will save on costs a bit, reduce prep work, and make it easier to hand out more pieces (staples tend to drag over each other a bit when handing out).

Patriotic temporary tattoos are another option; those are about 4.5¢ each. Candy is another possibility, but everybody does candy. If you have lots of $$$, you could give out flags. We also ordered a bunch of pocket Constitutions (https://secure.heritage.org/firstPrinciples/pocketconstitution.aspx) from the Heritage Foundation. They say they ship them in two weeks, but we ordered 2 weeks ago and we just called them about it and they said it'd be another two weeks because they're swamped with orders. So it's a good thing we had stickers.

[LibertyEagle]

Wow, Jonathan! Great work. :) This is certainly something that we could all duplicate, all over the country. Wouldn't that be awesome!

[fr33domfightr]

Parades are certainly an excellent idea.

You guys just gave me another great idea.

Next week, we'll be having our annual county fair. What if I had some small stickers I could place in front of every toilet stall in that fair?? I mean, everyone MUST use the toilet right? So, if there's 100K people there, that's 100K impressions if everyone uses the toilet only once, and who goes only once in a full day at the fair?!

Haha, I think it's a great idea, woo hoo!!!!


FF :D

[Mahkato]

Next week, we'll be having our annual county fair. What if I had some small stickers I could place in front of every toilet stall in that fair?? I mean, everyone MUST use the toilet right? So, if there's 100K people there, that's 100K impressions if everyone uses the toilet only once, and who goes only once in a full day at the fair?!

Be careful with this. Leaving materials on someone else's property falls somewhere between littering and vandalism, not to mention that people will lose respect for your message. In most jurisdictions you should be able to stand on a public sidewalk to distribute literature, but you can't just leave it there for people to take.

[fr33domfightr]

Be careful with this. Leaving materials on someone else's property falls somewhere between littering and vandalism, not to mention that people will lose respect for your message. In most jurisdictions you should be able to stand on a public sidewalk to distribute literature, but you can't just leave it there for people to take.


Your comments have been noted, thanks. I was thinking of something pretty small, only noticeable when your standing close to the tile or roll holder. Also, it's something that could easily be removed. In the case I was talking, about at the fair, the land is "state owned."

Upon thinking about this, I've got more ideas. What about styrofoam cups or napkins with the CampaignForLiberty.com address on them? Looks like there are more ways to spread the word.


FF

[raystone]

Excellent Jonathan Kovaciny !!

[mport1]

Excellent job on this.

[mediahasyou]

March that parade straight down to St. PAul.

[Mahkato]

Bump!

Reminder to everyone - you don't need to be in the parade to walk down the parade route before the parade starts and distribute literature!

[muzzled dogg]

looked like those mutts were puttin in work

good job yall

[Mahkato]

Here are a few pictures from our seventh (and final) parade this summer. This one was in Gaylord, MN. We handed out about 1,500 fliers.


http://www.ronpaulgateway.com/wiki/images/e/e7/Rpp_gmn_003.jpg

http://www.ronpaulgateway.com/wiki/images/4/4b/Rpp_gmn_001.jpg

http://www.ronpaulgateway.com/wiki/images/3/34/Rpp_gmn_002.jpg

[Crickett]

[QUOTE=J could give out flags. We also ordered a bunch of pocket Constitutions (https://secure.heritage.org/firstPrinciples/pocketconstitution.aspx) from the Heritage Foundation. They say they ship them in two weeks, but we ordered 2 weeks ago and we just called them about it and they said it'd be another two weeks because they're swamped with orders. So it's a good thing we had stickers.[/QUOTE]

My VERY favorite place to get those constitutions is nccs.net . $30/100 includes shipping and they got them to me in TWO days, when I told them I wanted to give them out a a meeting!!!
It is the National Center for Constitutional Studies, and they are SO great that you can even send them $30. and THEY will give out 100 copies of it! LOL

[nbruno322]

Great work fellow Minnesotans!

[itshappening]

Jonathan, thank you so much for promoting the event locally, this is so important!

[Mahkato]

My VERY favorite place to get those constitutions is nccs.net . $30/100 includes shipping and they got them to me in TWO days, when I told them I wanted to give them out a a meeting!!!
It is the National Center for Constitutional Studies, and they are SO great that you can even send them $30. and THEY will give out 100 copies of it! LOL

Looks good, thanks. I never did hear back from Heritage.

[Mahkato]

Bump!

[Lovecraftian4Paul]

Great job. I'm looking forward to when the CFL gets off the ground as more than a blog in the near future. It will be a lot easier to promote when we have real groups and action to tackle.