Mobilizing CFACT Across New York: Albany, Schenectady, Syracuse!

During the month of September I embarked on a 24 day east coast tour to mobilize our CFACT campus representatives and group members for the new year. On the first leg of the tour I visited CFACT groups in Boston. On the second leg I visited schools in New York, including SUNY Albany, Union College and SUNY Syracuse. SUNY Albany was first. The University looked like a scene right out of Aldous Huxley’s famous Brave New World or some sordid 1970’s sci-fi. I had to do some serious grass-roots recruiting at Albany because we had no connections there -which meant recruiting fresh faces and growing the movement!

I passed out CFACT literature and talked with students for several hours. I knew that following up with the rookies would be important if I wanted to get them active since they were new to the organization. I also knew that I would need a local point of contact to help the students get started. A seasoned activist, Stephen Lyon happened to live nearby. I gave him a call and he agreed to help the new student group host its first meeting. After SUNY, Albany I headed northwest to Union College.

Union College is impressive. It is a private, non-denominational liberal arts college located in Schenectady, New York. It was founded in the wake of the American Revolution. When I arrived the students were still moving into their dorms. I recruited all day. After acquiring a sizeable list of interested students, I decided that contacting the Leadership Institute and College Republicans would be valuable. In this effort, I learned that a group of students on campus had founded an alternative campus newspaper with a conservative bent the prior year, called The Union Sentinel. I contacted the editor of the Sentinel and she put me in touch with a student on her staff who she knew was passionate about the free-market and environmental issues. She was right, and the student she put me in touch with had already heard of CFACT! She is now excited to host several events on campus during the fall, including a hike, a litter clean up and a lecture exposing the mis-information in Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth.

After Union College I made my way up to SUNY Syracuse, where I met one of CFACT’s seasoned activists for a planning session and to invite her on our upcoming trip to Cancun. We discussed the details surrounding the Cancun trip as well as our plans to protest the United Nations’ conference on climate change while there. She looked very excited. I also informed her about CFACT’s upcoming $3,000 video contest, which rewards students for coming up with creative ways to educate the public about the absudity of the notion of man-caused global warming. We also discussed her group’s strategy for the fall. She told me about her group’s plans to host a “Global Warming Beach Party” on one of the coldest days of the year. She wants her club to hand out Global Warming Hoax Fact Sheets during the event, while it is most evident that the earth is not boiling.