CENSUS--CLARK

I bought two papers on April 1—the Georgia version of the Florida Times-Union and the Waycross Journal Herald (I was at home for Easter weekend!). However, neither newspaper had even a single article about the census in it! That afternoon I drove to Atlanta to check out another law school, and while I didn’t buy one of their papers I did run into a big Census group in the middle of one of the squares in downtown. There were probably 30 or 40 different workers with different stations trying to remind people to fill out their census forms.

I explained that I was taking a course that had particular interest in the census, and they gave me a copy of all of their literature. They were passing out forms in six different languages explaining why the census is important and answers to frequently asked questions, as well as several reminder cards to put on their refrigerators, caps and t-shirts (for free) that say Census 2010, and of course copies of the census paper itself. Every time I passed this square there were hundreds of people around, and by encouraging people to fill them out as they were standing there I bet they were able to get a lot more people to do it than would otherwise.