Hope everyone had a great UnTurkey Day! (Yeah, yeah, we know we’re a bit late on this – but we needed a break after all the back-to-back conferences. Now we’re back – kindna. )

Hey!

And while we’re at it, sign up for SARA E-News to be kept up to date with all the going-ons!

More pics from the Boston Demand Liberation regional conference as promised! We’ve also included some of the super cool feedback we’ve received! yay!

Bagels in the morning with Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese and Hummus! Yummus! (Ok, that “yummus” thing is dorky.)


“For its intended purpose of teaching leadership
and promoting organizers, this program is very thorough and effective. Keep up
the good work!!!”

“Wow. I am truly impressed.”

“I learned
a lot. This has been a valuable experience. It makes me want to go home and
make a difference. The food was awesome. Thank you.”

“I had a
great time. Thanks for all the stuff. These things re-energize me to be a better
advocate at my school.”

“!!! Kick ass !!! conference! Fun. With great
information. All of you guys were wonderful! “

Evil KFC Colonel Clones!!! Attack!!!


“Ahh holy
crap awesomeness! This has given me the most innovative and effective ideas.”

Don’t forget – we’ll be in Gainesville, FL, Austin, TX, and Minneapolis, MN in February 2005. We hope to see you in one of the other upcoming conferences! (We know we mentioned it already )

:: Please note date change; the date below is correct. Thanks! ::

SARA Winter Benefit Reception

An evening of wine, truffles, crostini, and great company!
Thursday, December 9, 2004

6:30PM to 9:00PM



Click here for more info and to register online now – thanks for your support! Please note space is limited!

The benefit reception will support the
Student Animal Rights Alliance’s youth mobilization, education, and leadership
development work to build a strong and diverse youth movement for animals.

AND as an added *bonus* – all reception
attendees will receive an official “Liberation Now!” Goodie Bag featuring
dozens of vegan and cruelty-free sample products from such companies as Urban
Decay, Dr. Bronner’s, Recycline, Merry Hempsters, Clif Bar, Vermont Soap
Company, Sunfeather Soaps, V’TAE Body & Parfum, and more!

The
Student Animal Rights Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
All contributions are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowable by
law.



We look forward to seeing you there!!!

BRRRRRRRRRR! It’s freezing in Boston!!!!!

So
yep, we’re totally trying to make up for not putting up pics over the
weekend of LibNow. Here’s a bunch of pics from the conference today!

Isn’t that “Welcome to Demand Liberation!” backdrop cool?

More pics and updates on Monday when we get back from the conference!!!

Awww…they love us. Yay us!

We forgot to post some evals from the Philly conference. Come
visit us at one of the upcoming ones – we’ll be in Beantown (aka
Boston) this weekend, then we’ll be taking a winter hiatus, then we’ll
be hitting up Gainesville, FL, Austin, TX, and finally Minneapolis, MN. All the cool kids are coming!

We swear we didn’t make any of these up! (Cross our hearts and wish to die.)

Oh, and here are some “interesting” ones.

Philly
was super fun! Folks came from all over including places like
Pittsburgh and State College in PA, New Jersey, and North Carolina -
and of course the Philly area too!

 We had a last minute venue change, that sucked. But the space at the
William Way Community Center was great! (Not to mention that we found
out that the Director of the center is vegan! yay! We’re taking over
the world! )


Catering by the fine folks at the all-vegan and organic Kind Cafe
was surely an incredible treat! Yum! We had the Happy “Chicken” Wrap
(grilled, textured tofu with veggies), Harvest Garden Wrap (fresh and
grilled veggies for all those who just love their veggies upfront), and
of course, since we’re in Philly – the Cheeze Steak Wrap (grilled
seitan and veggies). Oh, we also had side salads of cous cous on one
day and wheatberries on the other.


We can’t wait til the Boston “Demand Liberation” conference this weekend. Leaving the Mid-Atlantic for the Northeast!!!! Rawk!

We admit it. We’re horrible, horrible people. We lied.

We said we’d update our xanga weblog with pics from the LibNow
conference throughout the weekend, and we didn’t do it.
Sooooorrrrrrryyyyy.

But here’s the link to where you can check out some pics from the conference – http://www.defendanimals.org/libnow/gallery/

 We were having crazy technical difficulties at the LibNow conference.
In all of our past events, we’ve never had so many
technical/audio-visual problemos. First, the registration file
containing all the names and info of all the LibNow registrants was
corrupted and we had to get a new one through Mollyguard (the online
company we use to help facilitate our online registrations). Then our
laptop went crazy, then the printer. So we weren’t even able to
register and check folks in on the first night of our conference.

(“Well, then why didn’t you guys do that way before the conference?” -
you may ask. We would if we could – tons of people register at the last
minute online on the day of the conference, and even just a few minutes
before the conference [yeah, we're talking about you Andrea from
Bakersfield! ]  – so we always have to print out our registration file and name tags just before the conference.)

Hope you enjoy the pics from the conference.

Also, you may think we are crazy, but we’ve already started planning the next Liberation Now! national student animal rights conference in 2005. The next Liberation Now! conference will be held in Chicago, IL in November 2005 – it will be our very first national conference in the Midwest! We’re super duper excited!!

And yep, it’s the morning of our first Demand Liberation regional student animal rights action conference
- we can’t wait, it’ll be so much fun! Like we’ve said, at the
regionals, we really, really get to sit down, meet, and chat with many
of the activists. It’s super cool and incredibly inspiring.

Oh,
we also got these cool wallet thingys from a local artist in NYC. It’s
made from recycled juice cartons! (And yes, they have Silk soymilk
carton ones too!) Aren’t they cool? You can win one at our current SARA E-News contest.

Ok, tata. Gotta get ready for the Philly conference. Demand Liberation!!!!!!

Okay, okay, so a bunch of you have emailed us and complained about us being too LibNow-centric and not talking up enough about the Demand Liberation regional action conferences.

Of course that’s just because the Liberation Now! national conference is the first of the six conferences that we are doing this year. You’ve certainly been hearing more about LibNow because it’s coming up so soon! (THIS WEEKEND!) 

Believe us, you’ll be sick of hearing about the Demand Liberation regional action conferences as soon as LibNow is over.  (Just like how you may be already sick of hearing about LibNow right now.)

And really, just between you and me (and the whole rest of the world with internet access ), we’re actually bigger fans of the Demand Liberation regional action conferences than the Liberation Now! national conference.

Why?

Well, while the LibNow national is all cool and great and all, at the Demand Liberation regionals we actually get to meet almost everyone at the conference and everyone at the conference also gets to meet with everyone else who are attending the conference. The regionals are smaller so we can actually get to know everyone. LibNow is way too big and has too many attendees for us to do that – though we of course certainly try.

Also, the Demand Liberation regional action conferences feature programs that are much more focused and more action-oriented so folks can go through a bunch of super rad workshops to really delve into the nuts & bolts of organizing for animals.

Our favorite thing at the regionals though, is definitely the Regional Action Planning Meetings where activists sit down and chat with each other and share their knowledge and ideas for action and get to learn more about what everyone else is doing at their schools and in their communities.

Really, really, we’re so totally looking forward to them. We can’t wait to be in Austin, Boston, Philly, Gainesville, and Minneapolis! These are all cities that the Student Animal Rights Alliance has never organized events in! And we’ve already gotten an incredible, incredible response Yay!

Oh, and of course, as always, we really, really could use your help! With six conference in six different cities all over the country, we’re sure you can imagine how crazy it is for us to do the promo’s. Please, please, please help us spread the word about the conferences. We’ll love you forever! *smooch*

Visit http://www.DemandLiberation.com , pick your city, and go to “Help Us” to learn more about what you can do to help us spread the word! Thanks yo!

And also, super duper thanks to the two of you so far who’ve signed our guestbook! That’s sooooo sweet! Thanks!!!!

Oooh, we just finished with the new design of our main website – www.defendanimals.org – check it out and tell us whatcha think!

LibNow is just around the corner, please help us spread the word! A super new exciting feature that we added is for folks who are planning on attending LibNow to sign up for our TxtMob - it’s a super cool service that will allow us to broadcast text messages to all the conference peeps’ cellphones. That will allow us to easily do mass organizing on site at the conference, letting people know exactly what’s up when and if something comes up. Super high tech, eh?  Make sure to sign up if you are going to be at LibNow! This is *just for folks* who will physically be at LibNow, all the updates will only be relevant to folks who are going to be there.  

We think we deserve mad props for that TxtMob feature!

Surely, don’t forget about the Demand Liberation conferences which are also not too far around the corner and RIGHT AFTER LibNow! – www.DemandLiberation.com

Lastly, folks really, really should sign our guestbook here on xanga! We have no guestbook entries!