Received an Evite from “Stick It to the Man” to join in the Left-Wing Letter Bee No. 6, a very worthy exercise of applied democracy that goes from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday, April 10 at Amnesia Bar, 853 Valencia St. in San Francisco.
The notion is to express our grievances and concerns to our government representatives in an old-fashioned letter, which, according to many wonks, is the equivalent of 100 voices. (Throw a photograph in there and you’ve also upped your word count by a 1000 words.)
As explained in the invitation, “Right-wingers write more letters than we do, and we’ve set about fixing it. We’re talking about letters, here, not email, or pre-printed postcards, or faxes, or phone calls. Ink on paper — you ever wonder how church groups seem to have the power to change corporations’ minds? Or how the NRA swings legislation? Think about it: they can’t deny or ignore a real person’s real words on real paper.”
The organizers (the SF Weekly’s Hiya Swanhuyser among them) explain that it doesn’t matter what letter you write so long as you write about “whatever’s on your left-wing mind.” To get that left-wing mind active and writing, sample letters will be on hand as will some manual typewriters (I will forgo the monkeys-typing-Hamlet probability gag in deference to the fact that letter writing works).
The Letter Bee will be followed by “Triumph of the Ukulele,” a musical program featuring Tippy Canoe, The Hi-Hokem Boys, Go Go & The Coconuts, and Uni & Her Ukulele.
An evening of thinking, inking and drinking, my kind of night. Better write a letter or someday you may find yourself penning a Dear John to Free Speech.
