Asheville – Take Two!

This week in Charlotte…

This week the Charlotte team made another trip to the beautiful city of Asheville, North Carolina. This trip was primarily to follow up on one-on-ones we had on our last trip, finalize details for our tour stop on the July 16th, and attend an event to get petition signatures for the “Cut the Strings” Campaign. On our previous visit, the team had grown to adore Asheville with all its wondrous customs. We had found that the culture itself was very different from the one we had grown accustomed to in Charlotte, thus we had had to adjust our speaking points and figure out different ways to relay our ideas and strategies to the groups we were dealing with. We had learned that when organizing you have to understand the crowd that you are dealing with and then amend your thoughts likewise. Thus, because Asheville is a place where people lay emphasis on the environment, our biggest companion when getting word out about our issues would be such organizations. What this meant was that though in Charlotte a farmers market may not seem to be an ideal spot to get petition signatures or distribute flyers, in Asheville this was the perfect opportunity. At our event later that night, we used what we had learned to attain signatures for our “Cut the Strings” petition. It seemed to work magnificently, and though at first we were a bit nervous because it was our first tabling assignment, we grew more comfortable with the crowd as the night went on. We also distributed 1250 “Respect Our Vote” and “Cut the Strings” flyers to several different churches. By the end of the day, we were exhausted but content with the outcomes of the trip.

This week we are also looking forward to working with Homeless Helping Homeless, as well the League of Women Voters this coming weekend.

Maiysa Mesbah and Joyce Lutu