[CUADPUpdate] A Letter From Sr. Helen Prejean, CSJ

[Abraham J. Bonowitz]

Sent to CUADPUpdate
and a few others....


A LETTER FROM Sr. HELEN PREJEAN, CSJ,

regarding the upcoming reissue of the Dead Man Walking Album
and the accompanying DVD of the Dead Man Walking Concert.

NOTE:  Along with the fund raising opportunity
mentioned below, materials are being prepared to
assist activists in using this new DVD as a
platform for hosting educational and/or fund
raising house parties around the occasion of the
30th Anniversary of the Gregg decision.  Details
will follow.

**

Dear Friends,

We have an exciting opportunity to take advantage
of and I want to invite your participation.

The audio soundtrack to the film “Dead Man
Walking,” featuring artists like Steve Earle, Tom
Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Mary
Chapin Carpenter, Suzanne Vega and others, is
about to be re-issued by Sony BMG. This CD will
be packaged together with a feature-length
documentary film on DVD of the “Not In Our Name ­
Dead Man Walking ­ The Concert”  held at the
Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in March 1998.
This DVD has never before been made available to
the public and features extraordinary live
performances by Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle, Ani
DiFranco, Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament, Rahat Nusrat
Fateh Ali Khan, Dildar Hussain and David Robbins,
along with speeches by myself and Tim Robbins.

This CD/ DVD is currently scheduled to hit stores
on June 13.  I am pleased to announce that Murder
Victims Families for Reconciliation (MVFR) and
Murder Victims Families for Human Rights (MVFHR)
will each realize royalties from the sale of this package,
which is expected to retail at about $30.00.  The
royalties of the first release of the CD generated
well over $100,000 for MVFR, so there is a great
deal of excitement and potential.

There is now an opportunity for the rest of the
movement to join in promoting this new release,
which will both help generate new royalties for
MVFR and MVFHR, and also raise a few dollars for
your own organization.  SONY has agreed to a
three-week advance sale period during which this
product will exclusively be sold through the web
pages of groups like your own. Any group can sign
up as an affiliate partner and generate sales
that help raise funding and awareness. You may be
familiar with a similar opportunity that many
movement groups took advantage of recently with
the sale of the DVD of “The Exonerated.”

CUADP is working with ActiveMusic to set up a
similarly structured opportunity so that any
movement group can add advertisements to their
web page to help generate sales of the DMW
CD/DVD.  Each sale generated by a participating
group will generate at $5.00 for that group.  No
matter who generates the sale, MVFR and MVFHR
will benefit in all cases.

I am very pleased to see the music industry
assist our movement in this way, and I urge your
participation.

Yours in the Struggle for Abolition,


Sr. Helen Prejean, CSJ


***************


Pretty cool, eh?

To see a PDF of Sony's "one sheet," which is the 
piece that goes to the record stores and other 
venues, send a request to <abe at cuadp.org>.

To reiterate - NEXT WEEK, the re-release of the 
original album (including extra material!) along 
with a DVD of the film of that concert will 
become available in a special three week advance 
sale *only* through the internet.  The package 
hits the stores and general availability on June 
13.  Working with Active Music (the producers of 
the film), Citizens United for Alternatives to 
the Death Penalty (CUADP) is coordinating a 
campaign to give movement entities a chance to 
help promote the film, which hopefully will draw 
in new members and also make us all a little 
money.  This three week advance window is the 
critical moment for us to make the most of this opportunity.

SO, what do YOU have to do to participate?

Simple:  Send a message to <abe at cuadp.org> with 
"Dead Man Walking DVD" in the subject line and 
the following information in the body of your message:

Name of Group:
URL of Group Web Page:
Name of Contact Person:
E-mail of Contact Person:
Phone number of Contact Person:
Mailing address of where to send the check:

As soon as the web banners and your group's 
embedded code are ready, I'll send them to you 
and you can get started.  Please alert your web 
designer to be ready to place the banner on your 
page on Monday, May 22 or later.  Then, its up to 
you to point your membership to the link on your 
page, and when they order the package by first 
clicking on the banner ad on YOUR page, your 
group gets the credit.  It's that simple!

All groups participating in the project will also 
have their name and link added to the Active 
Music web page at 
http://www.activemusic.org/deadman-links.php - 
which people ordering the DVD will have a chance 
to see.  (All orders will actually be placed via the Active Music web page.

OK?

I look forward to working with you on this project!

--abe

Abraham J. Bonowitz
for Active Music and CUADP
800-973-6548
www.CUADP.org
http://www.activemusic.org/