The tipoff
The secretive email came in at about 7:15 on Wednesday morning: "Be at Lafayette park by the White House at 10:30am today." Nothing more. But I knew what it was about.
The Sierra Club -- perhaps the most credible, and mainstream, environmental group in the U.S. -- was going to break its own 120-year-old rules, for just one day. Its leaders were going to get busted.
(Why the secrecy, I'm not sure. Other groups do civil disobedience all the time and release the info well in advance. They all, including the Sierra Club, also reach out to the police to let them know what's coming -- you don't want to show up to be arrested and find a shortage of police officers! So, please don't send me early morning emails thinking I'll be intrigued and show up. I was expecting this one!)
As it happens and is rarely the case for a poor freelancer, this fit just perfectly into my schedule. I was planning on making a video short just a few blocks away, and a few hours earlier.
This one, on a bishop taking her work to the streets of Washington (in full bishop regalia) turned out to be surprisingly moving. It's gotten a good number of plays, and in checking the stats, I can see why. "Ashes to Go" turns out to be a Facebook hit, with the biggest chunk of its traffic coming from people putting it on Facebook pages.
Both videos are below.
The Sierra Club -- perhaps the most credible, and mainstream, environmental group in the U.S. -- was going to break its own 120-year-old rules, for just one day. Its leaders were going to get busted.
(Why the secrecy, I'm not sure. Other groups do civil disobedience all the time and release the info well in advance. They all, including the Sierra Club, also reach out to the police to let them know what's coming -- you don't want to show up to be arrested and find a shortage of police officers! So, please don't send me early morning emails thinking I'll be intrigued and show up. I was expecting this one!)
As it happens and is rarely the case for a poor freelancer, this fit just perfectly into my schedule. I was planning on making a video short just a few blocks away, and a few hours earlier.
This one, on a bishop taking her work to the streets of Washington (in full bishop regalia) turned out to be surprisingly moving. It's gotten a good number of plays, and in checking the stats, I can see why. "Ashes to Go" turns out to be a Facebook hit, with the biggest chunk of its traffic coming from people putting it on Facebook pages.
Both videos are below.
posted by jay at
9:27 AM
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