Vigil For Democracy
Thursday - Saturdays
4:45-7:15pm
Westport, UMKC, Plaza, Brookside, Troost
The Vigil For Democracy booth has four components.
The first is a voter information and registration station.
The organizational expansion of this first component is to go door to door in neighborhoods throughout the area, providing voter information, discussion, and help registering online and checking the status and voter address with the Secretary of State.
The Vigil will also carry official voter application postcards if paper is preferred and they want a voter card in the mail that way, through their local election board.
When going door to door, the other three components of the booth are also brought along in a condensed form.
The second component of the booth is the Pretty Penny Protest.
The purpose of the Pretty Penny Protest is to plan a spectacle to get people’s attention, to make clear and decisive demands, and to take collective action which has a material referent.
Making the pennies is a simple task and a simple message that can be carried on at the Vigil For Democracy when there is nothing else going on, or as needed, and it is a gesture that goes one step beyond voting which the Vigil can organize and promote.
The third component of the booth is selling fresh fruit and vegetables.
It’s a welcoming way to engage with people and offer something good and wholesome that’s not at all divisive.
A very small operation could give it away in exchange for donations, and not need a business license. The operation could grow into becoming a food truck and offer more. At first we just sell what good produce we can, and help fund the project and our own work with this simple gesture of offering clean, whole produce, in $5 bunches and assortments. It need not be more than a tray on a table.
It’s about conveying more than ideas, but also the essentially human things like fresh produce. Where there are food deserts and voters being disenfranchised, pop up a Vigil For Democracy. Anybody can do it with the resources they have.
The fourth component of the booth is a station promoting the community building project model, which is two things: a dinner delivery and compost pickup service, and an open community broadcast as a simple youtube channel.
The community broadcast can be polished and elaborate, after it grows and develops, or remain bare and amateurish, which is the way I am starting mine. Either way, it’s still just a simple youtube channel, which broadcasts as much as it can, livestreams the dinner delivery service, and prioritizes featuring the projects and products and artworks of the participants.
Events and festivals are held regularly, and the community building project creates a new form of currency as it operates over a four week cycle.
I call it the organization of the future, and it is the big, theoretical, positive aspect of the booth, to go along with the practical positive component of selling small amounts of fresh produce with the resources you have, and connecting that gesture with the meal service aspect of the project.
The Vigil For Democracy is a kind of ritual, at whatever level, and consists of four essential components.
Featured
Pop up voter info and registration booths
Coordinate groups of four to go door to door passing out pennies for good legislation
Occupy public space in an encouraging way
Collaborate on paperwork to join local election boards
Join forces to obtain protesting in permits and block party permits
