[SfN] O17 rally at Wright & Green

[Jim Buell]

This release is being sent to the News-Gazette, Daily Illini, Octopus, 
WICD-TV 15, WCIA-TV 3, and WILL-AM. I hope everyone on these lists will be 
able to take part in the rally at Green and Wright this Tuesday at 11:40 
a.m., and that as many as possible will join the caravan out at noon or 
travel with other Students for Nader people at 2 p.m.

I'll be at the S4N meeting tomorrow night at 6 in 120 Lincoln Hall looking 
for people to help set up the rally and caravan carpool. Or give me a call 
at the downtown Champaign office anytime after 2 tomorrow afternoon - 
355-5001. I've got B4BorG and Mr. Clean costumes and am looking for people 
to fill 'em. ;-) Also looking for empty, clean Bud/Busch cans and a green 
beachball for the 'Bud Bowl' mentioned in the press release.

This is gonna be fun!

Jim

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:        Jim Buell, 217/390-6368 (mobile)
                 Prairie Greens of East Central Illinois, 217/355-5001 (office)
                 www.prairienet.org/greens/


Local Greens Rally on Green, Join Statewide Caravan to Protest St. Louis Debate

CHAMPAIGN - Local supporters of the Green Party presidential ticket will 
join forces with their colleagues from across Illinois on Tuesday morning 
to protest the exclusion of Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader 
from the debate to be held in St. Louis.

A statewide caravan of Nader supporters will get its start in Chicago on 
Tuesday morning, arriving at the intersection of Wright and Green Streets 
in Champaign-Urbana around 11:40 a.m. There, protestors will call attention 
to the exclusionary tactics of the two-party system and to the need for a 
grassroots democratic movement to take political control away from 
corporate sponsors and lobbyists and return power to voters.

The Green Street rally will feature costumed activists portraying 
Billionaires for BushOrGore and Mr. Clean, participating in a "Bud Bowl" to 
satirize the exclusionary corporate-sponsored series of presidential debates.

A local contingent of Greens will join the caravan, which will make a stop 
in Springfield, Illinois, before heading to the Washington University 
campus in St. Louis, where the Republican and Democratic candidates, George 
Bush and Al Gore, are scheduled to appear in a televised debate sponsored 
by Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company.

Nader was locked out of the first presidential debate in Boston and told 
not to come to last week's debate in Winston-Salem, N.C. and to Tuesday's 
event in St. Louis. Nader has announced he will be in St. Louis for the debate.

The Green Party represents a progressive, populist movement built around 
local consensus decision-making and a set of ideals known as the Ten Key 
Values: ecological wisdom, social justice and equal opportunity, grassroots 
democracy, nonviolence, decentralization, community-based economics, gender 
equity and cooperative values, respect for diversity, personal and global 
responsibility, and future focus and sustainability.