Fundraising!

Last Night's (8/1/08) Fundraising

    On the bus traveling down a long and lonely road in New Mexico I write you all about yesterdays' fundraising efforts. As mentioned in the previous blogs we a very low on funds and each day finds us working harder to make enough money to get to the next spot. We had hoped that we'd make enough money before the trip so that we could focus on working with communities and performing. However, that wasn't the case. In reality we were only able to raise a fraction of the amount that we needed for this trip. When we realized our situation back home it wasn't a difficult decision to make. Go anyway! Go because we will learn more than any classroom could ever teach us. Go because men, women and children are waiting for our words. Go because some of those children will be inspired by our having gone, words or lives. Go because if we do not go and reach out to these communities and help out... who will? Go because our words have the power to create and we as a people must finds ways to do just that in order to counteract the destruction that exists in our world. That's why we spent all of yesterday fundraising. To continue what we've set out to do.
    We picked up Jenny (Decora's Queen) in Phoenix the other and set out to to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is an organic foods supermarket that has been donating food to us along the way. Decora had called and the one in Phoenix was nice enough to set us up with a bag of groceries. PB&J here we come! After we picked up the food we headed towards the YMCA we had been at the previous day getting a workout to keep ourselves fit on this journey of ours. There, Graham had spoken to someone about a teen event happening the next day. The organizer of the event said that it would be cool if we came out and had DJ H20 spin with a possibility of a performance to raise some funds.
    When we got to the YMCA we set up and DJ H20 started to spin. In the meantime Decora and Jenny headed towards something called First Fridays. First Friday apparently attracts tons of people for various art displays, street performers and vendors. Decora found a good spot for us to set up and we headed over there after the event in the YMCA. Larry and his family came too.Larry is the Couch Surfer that put us up for two nights. Couch Surfing stems from a website (couchsurfing.com) where people connect online and stay at each others places instead of going to hotels. The idea is to save money and also create an interaction where one can learn from each other by "interacting with the locals". When we got to the area where First Friday is held it was packed full of hundreds of people. Decora was there and he guided us to park in front of an art gallery called Inn Studio. The artist's name is Michael David Little and he had some great work on display. People take houses and display their art all throughout the house. It was a pretty cool concept and the streets were lined with other artists doing the same.
    We learned that we only had a half hour before the noise ordinances went into effect so we had DJ H20 setup his equipment right in the bus. With one of the speakers blasting outside. While he spun on the ones and two's I hyped the crowd and mentioned that we had CD's for sale and were accepting donations. Crowds surrounded the bus before DJ H20 and I could even set up the equipment. They were all checking out the bus and trying to figure out what was going on. DJ H20 did an amazing set and we both had intermittent crowds surrounding the bus while he DJ'd and I lured them over on the mic. We made some more donation money while there and sold some merchandise as well(CD's and Shirts). The cops came around at 10pm (time noise ordinances went into effect) and told us we had to shut down. We did as soon as we could because there was a "Couch Surfing" party going on a few minutes away. Larry had put us on to it and we figured it could be another fund raising opportunity. Indeed it was. This house was PACKED full of people. Apparently it was a bday party for one of the people that lived at the house and word got around that there was a Hip Hop group from NY soon to be rocking the mic. The DJ there (DJ Noah) was off the chain and soon after we got there he passed on the equipment to DJ H20. He had the people dancing and groovin to his mixes while I (and on occasions Decora) reminded the crowd that we were accepting donations. A couple of hours later we got the crew ready (I gave a shout out to Free while on the mic because she was sleeping on the bus) and had the crowd movin with a couple tracks. While that went on I woke up (accidently scared her too) Corina who helped out by passing around the bucket and collecting money. After our performance we took some showers at that house and got back on the road. This time to New Mexico.

-Latin