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I got into this business back in late 2005, when I happened
upon the poll result that 51% of Americans wanted Bush
impeached(44% were against). "What! this can't be right.
No one says anything about impeachment, except a few
crazies on the Net. No politician says anything . . . "
But I checked, and the poll seemed to be accurate.

Now I live in a suburb of the Nation's Capital, and certainly
everyone I knew despised the Present Occupant. "Sure, he
shoud be impeached" was the universal reply when I asked.
I'm retired and I decided to take this idea out for a
spin. I was able to inherit the three local Impeachment
Meetup groups(MD, D.C. and NoVA), and we had our first
Impeachment Meetup in January 2006. Ten people showed up,
which turned out to be a high for many months.

We all had whined to various TV stations and to our
Congressman, written letters to the editor etc. So we
decided to publish our ideas ourselves(really just one
idea!). We would hand out fliers soliciting funds so that
we could publish ads in our local papers. Not full-page
ads; 4" by 4" that could be placed next to stories, with the
simple text "I M P E A C H H I M", surrounded by white
space; very eye-catching.

Soliciting funds . . . Well, we gotta have an entity to
which checks can be written. No one is going to write
checks to "Joe Blow" or to "Alan McConnell"(my name). But
it turned out to be easy to create a Limited Liability
Company(LLC), registered in Maryland, with a EIN from the
IRS; cost us $300 and a trip to Baltimore. So we have a
Washington Area Impeachment Fund, consisting of three
Co-Trustees -- I am one -- for the sole purpose of getting
and managing a bank account. We three Trustees are,
however, pledged to spend money _only_ as the Meetups
direct; and we've kept that pledge.

By this time it was well into February 2006, and we started
handing out fliers soliciting funds. People took these
fliers, promised to send something; but no money arrived.

But then someone -- the identity is lost in the mists of
time -- suggested that we could sell buttons. Bingo! this
was the idea that made us successful. We ordered fifty
buttons. They were one and a half inches in diameter -- not
too big -- and they had only the text "I M P E A C H H I M",
plus a small "union bug". They cost $278 in lots of
1000. We charged $5 per button at first and even got a few
buyers; but we quickly changed our policy to selling our
buttons for a dollar. Clearly, each sale makes us over
seventy cents.

And it turns out that, in the D.C. area at least, people
won't write checks to help get ads put into local papers,
but they will buy our buttons. We regularly made $20 an
hour, at subway stations, on streets with lots of pedestrian
traffic, at farmers' markets, etc. And of course we sold
like mad at the forums various groups held, at the demos,
large and small, that various groups organized, etc.

We brought in enough for about thirteen ads during the
late spring, summer, and early fall of 2006. But we didn't
get our second brainstorm until about October.

Yard signs. At first this was a very tentative experiment.
We bought fifty signs, again with the simple statement
"I M P E A C H H I M". And when they arrived, I put
one up in the yard of my small house in Silver Spring. I
went to bed wondering if I'd find a brick through my window
the next morning.

No brick. The sign still stood. No brick the next night, or
the following night. After a week I ran into a neighbor.
"Hey, Alan, that's a GREAT SIGN you have there!" "Gosh,
thanks. Would you like one?" "You bet!" And then there
were two.

After three days there were five, all within about 500 yards
of my house, on a road with a fair amount of traffic.

And then I went out to Georgia Avenue, which is a major
thoroughfare leading from deep in the District north out
throught the Maryland suburbs and winding up eventually
in Gettysburg, PA. Many people on Georgia Avenue took
signs. I would get honks from cars driving by as I
trudged up the avenue in the chill of late November
with the signs under my arm.

And now they are, to some extent, all over. The Meetups
have voted that they are "Free to a good home". A diligent
colleague over in Arlington VA has installed dozens there.
He too gets stopped on the street by people who want one.

Very impressive is yard signs in bunches. A few yard
signs within half a mile on a road makes a stunning effect.
If the road is well trafficked this effect will be
experienced by thousands of cars a day. Beats newspaper
ads hollow.

For a picture of the signs and of our buttons, and for
further information, see our very simple web site:

www.waifllc.org .

Our sale of buttons continues unabated. It had better,
for these yard signs are expensive, costing about $7 apiece
after reckoning in the shipping costs. We now buy them
in lots of 100, and have just ordered our sixth consignment.

All is not cakes and ale, however. First, there is the Yard
Sign Evaporation Effect. These signs get stolen. Not in
one fell swoop, Karl and Scooter driving by in a pickup
at 2 am. They tend to go one at a time. We have learned
to put them back onto the lawns, so that a person of
malign intent has to make several steps onto the lawn
in order to grab the sign. I suspect that many signs
decorate the bed rooms of high school students.

However, our biggest problem, our main bottleneck is: we
don't have enough (wo)manpower helping with the
button-selling and yard sign distribution. We have money,
and we know how to make lots more. But we could do a _lot_
more if we only had more helpers.

We are getting more helpers, incrementally, but even as we
celebrate our success it is sad to think how much more
successful we could be, if we had thirty people to help
instead of the four or five of us who are doing this work.
I think the problem is: people simply don't believe what
easy pleasant work this is. Sure, we get the occasional
snarly Bush supporter, but we beat a hasty retreat, with a
cheery "Sorry to disturb, God bless!" as we move on to the
next house.

Any of you out there care to help? Our web site is, again,

www.waifllc.org

and instructions on where to send a check are written there.

But the true help would be imitation! Get a bunch of people
together, spend $278 to buy a thousand buttons -- you might
as well use our distributor to save yourself setup costs --
and sell buttons to your community. You can use your
profits for yard signs, or ads, or to print out postcards to
your Congressman. You are limited only by your imagination.

(Written on July 4, 2007, 231 years after the Signing)

Authors Bio:
Alan McConnell is a retired mathematician, who
urges you to take a look at our D.C. area
activity. Visit: www.waifllc.org .