Sunday, July 31, 2005

DMB fans and One Supporters

We ran out of our large wristbands early in the day on Saturday, but nonetheless, this group of guys wanted the bands, so I convinced them that they should squeeze into smalls so I could take their photo, and that if they lost feeling or circulation in their hand, it was all for the cause and thus worth it...

Dave Matthews Band


Dave Matthews Band
Originally uploaded by Brande Jackson.
As seen from far, far away on the field! I haven't actually been really able to check out much of the band's sets at all this tour - we have traffic at our booth all throughout the night, but I am hoping to catch more of the show at some point on the west coast leg, which starts up in two weeks.

Dan talks to DMB fans


Dan talks to DMB fans
Originally uploaded by Brande Jackson.
We talked to lots and lots of people this weekend at Randall's Island, as Dan is here. I found myself really having great conversations all weekend - people are becoming more and more aware about this campaign, and the reality of it, the shear amount of people suffering and dying from poverty that can be ended, seems to be really hitting home with lots of the people we are interacting with, and they are excited to get to join such a powerful grassroots campaign as ONE.

Custom ONE Shirts

The extreme heat of working outdoors on summer concert tours leads some of our volunteers, like Jeanie here, to create their own custom ONE wear. It worked - fans still saw the shirt and approached her to find out how they could get involved!

Three more of our volunteers

These are three of the dozen or so volunteers we had helping us out at our Randall's Island NYC DMB shows this weekend. These guys did a great job, braving the dust and dirt and sun to help us sign up thousands of people for the ONE Campaign!

One Supporters at Randall's Island


One Supporters
Originally uploaded by Brande Jackson.
I love Randall's Island - well, I really, really like it, though I definitely don't like the dirt and dust that accompanies it. (And we were on the ‘less dusty side’ today, just wait for our Warped Tour blog from here next week…) I'm still trying to clean up and get rid of the dust that now coats me and everything I own...but I love doing outreach at a concert on an island nestled between Manhattan and Queens, with the New York skyline behind us. And I love working New York shows, one of my other favorite cities.

And I love that our weekend spend 'on the Island with Dave Matthews' gave us two of our best days yet working on the DMB tour this summer - in two days we signed up over 2500 people and went through every last white band we had in our truck, well over 2000! More importantly, we got lots of people, like the Dave fans you see here, involved and inspired to take action with this important campaign.

Monday, July 18, 2005

Live from Nebraska


I am sitting in a Holiday Inn somewhere in the middle of Nebraska. I truly have no idea where exactly I am at other than it is off of Highway 80 (we are on our way to Chicago to retrieve Mr. Kevin whom will help us for the next week or so with our outreach efforts on the Warped Tour while I bounce between Warped and DMB) and it smells distinctly of cow. I say distinctly in that it is not the faint ‘oh, there must be a few cows nearby eating grass’ smell, but rather, a ‘oh, how sad, there must be a slaughter house nearby” enough to make you gag smell.

I am sitting in a room at 4am in a town that reeks of cow because we have just finished two days of the Warped Tour. Our time in Salt Lake City was, well, hot, unbelievably hot, actually, but nonetheless we got some 750 young people to join the ONE Campaign, and no one seemed to suffer from any signs of heat stroke, though we did have partial carbon monoxide poisoning due to the generator in our neighbor’s booth. All in a days work. And today (yesterday, technically speaking I suppose, but I have crossed from the east cost to the west coast to the east coast back west again some four times in the last two weeks so time at this point is highly subjective…hence sitting up at 4am doing this…) in Denver was great. I love Denver – it’s a great city, and the shows there are always great, lots of support for the campaign. And the weather was perfect. We had awesome volunteers the last two days, which always make things go even better. We got over 1,000 people to sign the One Declaration today, and got lots of people to sign the Big Noise petition as well. All in all, a very productive – albeit tiring – weekend. Watch for my backlog of updates to come soon, and look for guest spots from Mary and Dan as they will update us from some of the Dave Matthew’s Band shows they are covering.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Many more updates to come...

In an nutshell the past two weeks have involved: getting over 20,000 people to sign the ONE Declaration and wristbands distributed, driving the truck from LA to Philly in a whirlwind 2 1/2 days, working Live 8, waking up the next morning and flying back to the west coast to open up Warped Tour, flying back to the east coast the following night to join the Dave Matthews Band Tour, driving some more, getting sick, getting rained on, watching the G8 closely, driving some more, getting sicker, taking a shot of Nyquil and starting this blog entry.

Many more back updates to come soon: we've started both the Dave Matthew's Band Tour and the Warped Tour to great success this past week, and Live 8 was the most insane, fun and rewarding thing we have done yet - lots of photos and even video to be posted soon. The Nyquil is starting to kick in though, so check back soon for more updates...