Hello. I am going to take a leap and start this thread for anyone who wants to help support the writers strike.

Lets us know your location and what you would like to help with .... (if you are local to some of the picketing sites let us know)

The current list of things are ...

Pizza Monday - deliver pizza to the writers at various studios around the country.

An ad in either a trade paper or a National paper like USA Today, or a major city paper.

A letter writing or essay writing campaign to local editorial paper pages, news organization or NPR shows. Expressing our support for the wrters demands.

Those are just a few things if you think of something else post it.

Joss is right this is a turning point and it's time that the customers voice be heard as well.

Love the domain name fans4writers ... and should it be variety or another paper? And I was thinking variety since its the trade paper and want to demosntrate to the studios and writers that the fans are on their side. Is it better USA today?

I am in montreal, so can't help out locally, but I can give a bit for the pizza thing, and as I said on the thread I don't mind going to the moderates of the Babylon 5 group to ask them for their help in this, considering JMS views on it, I am sure the folk over there would be interested.

And should we have a target date for the ads?

I'm more than 300 miles away, so I'm not thinking I can help very directly
(although I'm starting to think of going down to LA for a few days...maybe)

Anyway, I definitely want to donate when we start collecting for the ad
because I think the ad is a great way to show the suits that we, the viewers, don't think the writers are replaceable at all!

I'm in Portland, OR.
I'm reasonably sure we (PDX Browncoats) can generate some money to kick in for Pizza Mondays and ads. Not that I can speak for them on this issue, but if I were betting...
I'll keep track of this topic and start bouncing it around our cortex.

It's a great idea but I suspect the strike won't last long.
I'll be amazed if it lasts past November.

Essentially the rich owners of these corporations just go through the motions, pretend like they are doing everyone a favor and raise prices elsewhere to compensate - costs them nothing and they might even make more money by having an excuse to raise prices. Kind of how gasoline prices work.

It sounds like most people like the idea of doing pizza for the writers weekly. Right now I'm getting all the money for the pizza. As soon as possible, I'd like to transfer the excess from this week to an account that has more than just my name on it, and isn't mixed with my own money. I don't know exactly how that should happen, so I'm asking for help from people who have experience organizing campaigns. I know I'm not going to steal anybody's money, but few of us know each other all that well, and I know that money can quickly become a contentious issue. Help?

I love the idea of ads coming from different fandoms united under one banner. Those who read the Dollhouse thread will know that I have a slightly ulterior motive for supporting the idea of fandoms uniting, since (maybe getting way ahead of events) I've already proposed a united boycott of replacement shows and their advertisers. Nice for that idea if there were already an organization. But ads should come first, both in time and priority. I want to help with that however I can. I know lexigeek has already volunteered to help with the art. Surely we should try to take him up on that as soon as possible.

I think it would be ideal if we could cover Monday and other fandoms cover some other days on a regular basis. I'm only involved in Whedonverse fandom though. Are there others that would have the capacity and might be interested in covering another day? I know people have mentioned Battlestar Galactica, but that seems to overlap heavily with people here (plus the Jane Espenson love overlaps heavily), so that seems possibly more appropriate as a fandom to join with us for the Mondays.

I forgot to mention I'm in DC. But willing to help strategize and chip in on food and whatever else we come up with. As I posted in Caroline's thread on the .com side, I am less enthused about the Variety ad, but if it is what people think will make a difference, I could probably chip in a bit for that too. But if the food continues I'll focus on that instead.

I got the domain name fans4writers.org & .info as of right now. I have room on my hosting site to set it up if someone wants to help out designing it. Also I still have the Star for Whedon Paypal account which I have not used in a while, and could set a donation piece up from that. For a while and it could be kep seperate from the star funds when that gets ramped back up.

I was also thinking about the ad, how about a full page that is almost blank except for a few small lines at the bottom stating our point and our support for the writers.

Also right now, we are looking for a few people in the LA area who can spare a few hours of their time on Monday to deliver pizzas to various studios.

I'm on the other side of the world, so I can't do deliveries and time is scarce since my new job, but I can spare $100 from the Whedonesque kitty once the PayPal fund is set up.

Hey,
Well I am all for the pizzas and the ad(call me greedy)... and the whedon star account sounds fab. Ravenu could you shoot off an email to Gossi for help on the site? Since he is probably most experienced with that considering his other sites. That is if he is interested. If there can at least get up a simple quick and dirty fans4writer home page set up, with links to info about the strike, and asking for people interested in doing deliveries of pizza and asking for people to help collect from their respective fandoms for their ads... then it will be easier to approach the other fandoms.
Prakash