In response to my telling Jason about my first attempt at writing a song from scratch, he made me a coordinator on this site. I took that pretty seriously (as I tend to take most things), and below is my first attempt to reach out to the national-level DoP campaign by writing to Dot Maven.

Dear Dot

The purpose of this letter is to introduce myself and to ask about possible contact with Kucinich groups in my area.

I am Susan Livingston, and I am a coordinator - probably the newest one - on the www.propeace.net website. I have been an active member there since the site was about a week old. I have lived in Charleston, SC since 2001; before that, I was from Asheville, NC where I lived for more than 10 years.

As I'm sure you are aware, this is a very "red" area of the country. However, I believe there is a significant minority in this area who would get behind your efforts to promote the formation of a Department of Peace at the federal level.

Recently, I found a pro-peace group in Columbia, SC through the Meetup site. The only one in the state, it was newly formed and had a membership of one. In spite of the 1 1/2 hour distance between us, we are meeting for the first time this Tuesday, and our main agenda item is to mount an information blitz about the DoP campaign using your official poster. Our short-term goal is to increase our membership and learn the specifics of the campaign so that we may be effective advocates. Our long-term goal is to add our voices to the demonstration in Washington in September to promote the pro-peace agenda.

Can you help us? I realize that it is probably too late to organize a larger membership for this month's meeting. However, we would appreciate any contacts you might be able to facilitate so that we can have a viable group or groups. In the next two or three months, we would like to have groups functioning in a coordinated way in Asheville, Greenville/Spartanburg, Columbia, and Charleston. Please encourage anyone you know in this area along I-26 to go to the Meetup site and join our group.

Thank you for your efforts on behalf of the pro-peace effort. And thank you in advance for any help you may be able to provide us.