Monday, July 3, 2006

WAR More visits to Key Pfizer & Novartis Execs

Demo #1: Wayne Merkelsen, VP & General Counsel - Novartis

WAR activists paid Wayne his second visit a week after the first. Once again great supportive neighborhood. With so many good neighbors so open to our message coupled with lots of traffic and high visibility this place will get plenty of repeat visits. It's so nice here that we stayed longer than our customary time limit. Hopefully if we keep coming back eventually we will run into Wayne. After all, we just want to make sure that he and Pfizer have gotten our message. The killing at HLS has got to stop.

Demo #2: Thomas Concannon, Sr. Director Environmental Affairs, Health, and Safety - Pfizer

After a long walk in the hot summer sun, we arrived at the home of Thomas Concannon of Pfizer. This location is off the beaten path but provided a welcome cool breeze from the nearby Hudson River. Thomas must have a nice view from Apartment 3-S. We unfurled the large and graphic banner, but didn't stay long as the neighborhood was very quiet. Looks like everyone was away for the holiday. We'll be back, Thomas, on a work day evening next time in the hopes of catching you in.

Demo #3: Dorothy Watson, VP & General Counsel - Novartis

Our next location was a re-visit of the home of Dorothy Watson big shot with Novartis. Once again, we received nothing but positive response….oh, except for the one guy who scoffed at us as he told us that he had made lots of money off of Novartis. Building residents came out to see what the commotion was and ended up taking supplies of literature to distribute to their neighbors. We spoke to several neighbors who were interested enough in what we were doing to ask for contact information so that they could find out how to best support the campaign.

Police were called despite the fact that our demo was orderly and peaceful. They stayed a few minutes, asked a few questions and then went on their way hopefully to search for real crime since no laws were being broken on West 15 th Street that day. As we left, we were stopped by a local businessman who told us that his company dealt with many of the residents of Dorothy's building and that there are some real animal lovers in the building. He asked for a supply of flyers to put out in his pet supply store, which we were only too happy to provide him.

Demo #4: Richard Lynn, Vice president – Pfizer

The last stop of the day for WAR activists was the home of Richard Lynn of Pfizer. Richard's building is right next door to the Doris Duke Center of Performing Arts. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation was endowed by the late heiress, Doris Duke, who was a well known environmentalist and a compassionate animal lover. The employees were eager to find out why we were there protesting with our posters of mutilated puppies, kittens and monkeys, and many promised to pass the word to others at the Center.