Former Congressional Candidate Coleen Rowley's eBay Store Auctioning "Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey," While Experts Questio
(PRWeb) December 14, 2006 -- In the days after the election of 2006, when Congressional Candidate Coleen Rowley's Executive Assistant, Russell Simmons, realized that there was an outstanding campaign debt, he suggested opening an eBay store to sell remaining bumper stickers, buttons and campaign literature as a means to pay down that debt.
Rowley, the former FBI Special Agent made famous by Time Magazine's 2002 Persons of the Year issue entitled, "The Whistleblowers," and for her post-9/11 Congressional testimony on pre-9/11 intelligence failures, liked the idea. "I could not, in good conscience, keep asking people for donations when I knew that many of those people really couldn't afford to do so," Rowley commented. The challenger in Minnesota's Second Congressional District against incumbent Rep. John Kline, Rowley lost in her bid to unseat the avid pro-Administration Representative, who had mailed out a dozen oversized glossy mailings smearing her and her volunteer supporters on a broad range of issues.
Therefore, her Executive Assistant, Mr. Simmons - unrelated to the Russell Simmons of Def Comedy Jam fame - opened up an eBay store as a way for political activists across the country to purchase Rowley's campaign memorabilia. He found the response gratifying. "People from the East Coast began buying her bumper stickers for $10 and literature ensemble for $20 - I was just as amazed as everyone else."
But Simmons wanted to do more. He asked Campaign Manager Terry Rogers about anything used in the campaign which could be auctioned off on eBay which was unique to the Rowley for Congress campaign.
Rogers recalled the vintage WWII-era women's dress that had been purchased for a volunteer to wear, as a Lois Lane look-alike in a bit of "street theatre" at 4th of July parades, acting as if she was interviewing Ms. Rowley alongside real reporters including WCCO Radio/TV reporter Eric Eskola, a co-host of Twin Cities Public Television's "Almanac" program. Rogers proceeded to have the dress dry-cleaned and photographed to add to the eBay store.
Simmons also considered the great help the campaign had received from Georgianne Nienaber of northern Minnesota, who had spent the final five weeks of the campaign living in a hotel room in Northfield, Minn., so she could assist with media relations in attempting to respond to Rep. Kline's continuing attack advertisements and mailings.
"Nienaber returned to Rwanda after the campaign to visit friends and bury a close one who had recently passed away, whom she had met while researching her book, Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey, so I bought the book to send to her upon her return in hopes that she would autograph it for sale on the eBay store," Simmons said.
Nienaber returned to the States and mailed Simmons an autographed hardcover edition, instead. Neither she nor Simmons could have foreseen the fortuitous timing of the sale. The day Simmons added it to the store's inventory, international headlines announced the spreading Ebola virus which had killed 5,000 gorillas in Africa and threatened the extinction of the species.
As Simmons began reading his own copy of the book, he was overwhelmed by Nienaber's depth of personal research - which had taken her to Rwanda to visit Karasoke, where Dian Fossey had spent many years living with, studying and protecting 24 gorilla family groups. Nienaber's book, he found, in the fictional context in which it was written, "really captured the heart and soul of what Dian Fossey was trying to do in saving these gorillas from poaching and other forms of exploitation." Simmons said he felt like Nienaber's book allowed him to "see into the mind and psyche of this brilliant researcher in a way that traditional, stale biographies cannot do."
Now, due to the Ebola outbreak among the gorillas there and Nienaber's extensive research of Fossey's life, work, lectures and personal diaries, Nienaber's opinions on the Ebola outbreak and its likely consequences for the gorilla populations in Africa are being sought by those who want to know what Fossey would have thought about the current situation 20 years after her unsolved murder.
"I'm getting calls and emails from people all over the world and they are asking me about the validity of the ebola claims. My take on it is to take Fossey's advice and 'not climb evangelistically upon a save the gorillas bandwagon' until these studies have undergone vigorous validation," Nienaber said. "Otherwise, we risk putting millions of dollars into programs that may or may not work, when Africa, her people, and her wildlife are crying out for help," she added.
Simmons said the eBay store, http://stores.ebay.com/coleenrowleycampaignmemorabilia, will remain open "for some time" and will continue to feature other exclusive items unique to the Rowley campaign. "But," he said, "I think Georgianne Nienaber's book, Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey, will be the one item I will remember most."
"It was an honor to work with Nienaber and an even greater honor after reading her book, which is so emotionally gripping," Simmons said. "It befits the Coleen Rowley campaign, which was like no other political campaign I've been in through 25 years of participating in various candidacies and political causes. Both," he said, "are from the heart and they touch your heart in a way you cannot ever fully forget."
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