“Our First Active Duty Outreach In The Fort Meade Area”
02/09/2008 by Marie [Iraq Veterans Against The War; ivaw.org]
Well, we finally got the ball rolling and had our first active duty outreach in the Fort Meade area.
The plan was to pass out fliers for Winter Soldier at entrances at the mall, a popular GI hangout.
Thanks to Staples having problems with its online ordering, though, we didn’t have the fliers we intended on passing out.
Geoff Millard saved us and we passed out Sitreps instead.
We ended up breaking into two groups; one group from the Baltimore ISO put Sitreps on cars with DOD decals in the parking lot, and the other group (IVAW members) walked around the inside of the mall.
It’s safe to say a lot of people saw our shirts.
Whether or not anyone was receptive is unknown. One person took our picture, but he was the only one to approach us.
There were quite a few double takes and a lot of fliers passed out in the parking lot.
We will be going out again next Saturday, and this time with fliers.
And if three people inside and four people outside can get as much attention as we did, think what ten people walking shoulder to shoulder can do.
And if we can get more than that, there are plenty of other places nearby where we can go.
I want to thank Geoff and our ISO friends from Baltimore for taking the time to go "shopping at the mall" with us. Next time we’ll meet at 1200 and have lunch before getting started. Hope to see some of you there.
Oops, almost forget to mention the Cinnabon...