Several more in depth report backs from the Life After Capitalism Conference 2004 are being written up as we speak, needless to say the Republican National Convention protests in the days following the conference have taken up much of our energy since and so it has been a little slow in getting some of this stuff out to folks.
LAC 2004 was a huge success by all accounts. Our opening night 'Beyond Bush' event brought in close to 1300 people and helped set the political tone and high level of energy for the weeks to follow. The weekend conference itself brought in approximately 900 activists from around the country (as well as other parts of the world). As the organizing collective we have recieved an overlwhelming amount of positive feedback from both its participants as well as folks who were not able to make it but heard things from friends that were able to attend.
So here is the deal in terms of our financial status after several post-conference meetings with the CUNY Graduate Center (the location of our conference) - we have included the figures below in an attempt to be completely tansparent about all of this, so that all of you get a sense at what we are facing.
- We are in the hole nearly $10,000. - We brought in $18,000 through registration and our opening Friday night event but our expenses tallied close to $28,000.
These expenses were primarily due to 2 reasons:
1. As perhaps some of you heard, during the final days leading up to the conference Hunter College (under obvious outside political pressure) tried to shut down our opening night event and forced us to aquire $3 million dollars in insurance for the event - costing us several thousand dollars in unexpected costs.
2. We had nearly $2,000 in cash stolen from the CUNY Graduate center offices after the conference ended. How this happened remains a mystery but it was obviously somebody who had keys to two different sets of doors and knew their way around the office. At the current time we are being held responsible for that money.
We are asking people to help us out by either donating online at: www.lifeaftercapitalism.org (paypal)
Or writing a check to: Continuing Education CUNY Grad Center (re: Life After Capitalism Conference)
Again, this conference was put on by a small group of local activists here in New York City - with absolutely no outsde funding what so ever! A lot of this debt is currently on our credit cards and there is no way we can afford to pay it off without some serious support from those of you around the country who thought this was a worthwhile and inspiring event.
After we have resolved some of these financial difficulties we can re-focus on getting all of the audio and video documentation of the conference out to you all asap!
Thank you again to everyone who participated and supported Life After Capitalism 2004 in some way....
- LAC Organizing Collective