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December 22, 2008

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gay Power Living

Living in Riverdale, I hope I can find ways to express my ANGER at Diaz and his thuggery.

25 Yr Veteran Activist

ESPA urged activists to do nothing against Diaz. Alan Van Cappelle yelled at the organizers of the 2 protests in the wake of Prop 8 to cancel. After the LDS protest got 10,000 attendees and the City Hall protest got 20,000 Alan tried to hijack a town hall organized by one of the protests sponsors.

Mr Campagna's phone zap of Diaz shut down his district office phone lines for 3 weeks straight. Diaz was receiving 2-3000 calls daily. Before the phone zap Diaz was planning on introducing a Prop 8 bill in NY within the week. As the calls came in, plans for the anti-marriage referendum were tabled. More importantly Diaz went from publicly promising to caucus with Republicans to saying he will support a Democrat but maybe not Smith. By the end of the week Diaz declared Smith was his BFF.

Campagna's group THE POWER knew that they weren't going to sway Diaz on marriage. However that wasn't the point. EVERYONE in Albany watched what was happening to Diaz. That was a major part of Smith taking any anti-LGBT deals off the table.

ESPA has never been a strong coalition and is rather weak at field organizing. More than 90% of their budget goes back towards raising more money or to staff. ESPA could never get their "coalition" to generate 2000 calls a day for 3 weeks straight. That is more than 30,000 calls in 3 weeks.

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