I'm the local Haymarket Books coordinator for the ISO, and have been informed that Dahr Jamail, the only unembedded reporter in Iraq, is on tour promoting his new book Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, We have the possibility to bring him down in late October, and I believe this to be a great opportunity to bring visibility to both the local progressive movement, and the larger anti-war and progressive movements nationwide. The local Iraq Vets Against the War chapter has already agreed to cosponsor this event, but given the nature of the possible response, and large turn-out, that this could have, we feel that it would be imperative to have as much local support as possible, from a wide range of local progressive groups.
As such, I'm posting this in the hopes that you and your organizations would help to cosponsor this event. Cosponsoring would involve helping to spread word of the event, help with organization, etc. etc. Cosponsors would be able to set up booths, banners, etc. at the event, and could be a great opportunity to spread your message to the greater community. Also, if you know of any persons/organizations that might be interested in such an event, please pass this post on!
But: time is an issue! though i just discovered that we could bring him down, I need to know that we have a large base of local support to help with all of the logistics. (Most will be taken care of by myself, but we'll need to spread the word to get people to come to the event.) I'm going to be talking with the coordinators of his book tour on Tuesday, and I need to be able to say that we have local support so that we can schedule him. So please, get back to me soon! : )
The specifics of the event, such as they are so far, are thus:
Sunday, Oct 28th
8pm (? likely time.)
location TBA (depends on local support, expected turn out, etc)
This is a Haymarket Books event, currently cosponsored by the International Socialist Organization and the Iraq Vets Against the War, and hopefully soon you!
Here are some more helpful links:
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/
http://www.haymarketbooks.org
http://www.ivaw.org/
http://www.internationalsocialist.org/
Please get back to me as soon as possible! (before Tuesday!)
Thanks,
Ryan Walker ( noise (A@T) nosound DO.T org )
Haymarket Books Coordinator, C-U branch of the ISO