Beach Impeach

MEDIA INQUIRIES

Note: See the PHOTOS and VIDEOS links above for photos and videos from Beach Impeach 4 that are free for media usage.

My name is Brad Newsham. I’m a San Francisco writer and cab driver, and in January 2007 I took $20,000 out of my savings and threw myself into the Impeachment Movement. Perhaps the most significant thing I’ve done so far is to organize the four Beach Impeach events that have taken place in the Bay Area this year (www.beachimpeach.org).

Here's some background on me -- you'll see lots of story angles, I think:

-- I’m 56 years old, married, father of a 10-year old daughter. I lived in the Haight for 13 years, and have now lived in Oakland for 13 years. I have been a San Francisco cab driver since 1985. In April 2007 I joined San Francisco Green Cab, and now, after 20 years of driving cabs that averaged 8-12 miles per gallon, I am getting 45 mpg. I was the former head (1994-95) of United Taxicab Workers in San Francisco, at the time the largest group of organized cab drivers in the country.

-- My taxicab (I am the permit-holder for San Francisco Green Cab # 914, a Toyota Prius), with Cindy’s blessing, is the “official taxicab of the Cindy Sheehan for Congress campaign.”

-- As a younger man I visited all 50 States and four times circled the world with my backpack.

-- I am also a author. My two round-the-world travel memoirs were both published by Random House. My second book, “Take Me With You,” is the story of a 100-day trip I took through the ‘third world,’ knowing that at trip’s end I would invite one of the people I met along the way (one of the 3 billion on this planet who live on less than $2 a day) to visit me in America for one month, my treat. When my friend Tony, a rice farmer from the Philippines, came to visit America in the summer of 2001, we drove a San Francisco taxicab from SF to NYC and DC. Along the way we were interviewed by everyone: “All Things Considered,” the BBC, Voice of America, CBS “Early Show,” Christian Science Monitor, on and on... In mid-trip my cell phone rang: the Philippine ambassador inviting us to a special reception in our honor when we got to Washington. When we pulled into the embassy driveway, the cab’s meter read $20,644.90. It was a life-changing month for both Tony and me.

-- A year to the day after 9/11/2001, I started Backpack Nation, a nonprofit bent on transforming the West’s constantly rotating army of 2-3 million globe-wandering backpackers into an army of focused ambassadors, a force for good, and thereby help save our world. During the next three years I raised $26,000 and formed a network of backpack ambassadors who distributed that money to compelling individuals, families, villages, and situations, in Afghanistan, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Ecuador, Kenya, Guatemala, Jordan, Russia, Senegal, Thailand, and Vietnam.

-- In 2005, after listening for years to the people in the back of my cab complain vehemently about the Bush administration, I started to feel complicit and decided, instead of complaining along with everyone else, to actually DO something. I started The Impeachment Pledge, which raised about $14,000, but didn’t get the momentum I wanted it to get, and after six weeks I pulled the plug and released everyone’s money back to them.

-- In October, 2006, just before the November election, I came up with the idea for the “Beach Impeach Project.” (www.beachimpeach.org) There was such a surplus of bluster and chatter and so many noisy, angry WORDS in the Impeachment Movement -- we needed, I thought, some good VISUALS. I have since organized the three “Beach Impeach” events in San Francisco -- two at Ocean Beach, and one at Crissy Field. And on October 7, Cindy Sheehan, former US Representative from Georgia Cynthia McKinney, and headlining singer Michelle Shocked all came to Beach Impeach 4. At each event, 1,000 or more people laid their bodies down to form enormous pro-impeachment messages -- 100-foot tall lettering that stretched for a very impressive 400-700 feet. Photographers in helicopters captured dazzling images that have gone worldwide. CNN, ABC News, the SF Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, and many, many more have featured Beach Impeach.

Interested in writing a feature on me and the impeachment movement? Want to go for a ridealong in my taxicab?

Please call me,

Brad Newsham

415-305-TAXI (8294)

newsham@mac.com
www.beachimpeach.org
www.backpacknation.org
www.bradnewsham.com