TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY CAMPAIGN

It's time for the national launch of TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY and we really need your help now! Please make copies of the Press Release below and send or (even better) take them to your local newspapers. Let them know that you (and other members of your community) are planning to participate in the TAKE BACK YOUR TIME campaign and that you believe there will be interest in this event in the community. Encourage them to write their own story about the event. We can provide them with expert contacts and artwork, and you or someone like you can provide a local story hook. Send the release to your local talk radio programs as well. We can provide guests or you can be the guest yourself! The number of national endorsers of TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY is growing daily, and the New York Times will run an op-ed about the event on or near April 6th, our official launch date. A reporter from TIME magazine is also working on the story. Please help get these press releases out now; an effective launch is essential to the building of this campaign. And please clip any stories your local paper writes and send them to me at: KCTS TV, 401 Mercer St., Seattle, WA 98109. We'd also appreciate it if you'd email us about radio coverage (jdegraaf@kcts.org). We want to build up a record of response to our promotional and outreach efforts. And remember, if you still haven't filled out our questionnaire on the Web site, there's no present like the time. Leisurely yours, John de Graaf TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY national coordinator http://www.timeday.org = = = = = = = = = = Note: A formatted PDF version of this Press Release is available on the Time Day web site at: http://www.timeday.org/press

PRESS RELEASE-TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY CAMPAIGN LAUNCH

For Immediate Release
Contact: Gretchen Burger: 206 293-3772    
John de Graaf: 206 443-6747

70th Anniversary of 30-Hour Workweek Bill
Finds Americans Ready to Take Back Their Time

Seventy years ago, believe it or not, the United States Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that would have made the official U.S. workweek thirty hours-anything more would have been overtime. On April 6, 2003, the 70th anniversary of that momentous but forgotten event in U.S. history, organizers of a new initiative to fight overwork and time poverty will officially launch the "Take Back Your Time" campaign (www.timeday.org), leading to a national event organizers call "Take Back Your Time Day," to be held on October 24, 2003.

The More Things Change. . .

The Senate's goal back in 1933 was to create jobs for the unemployed, while giving workers time for family life, education, recreation and civic participation. Yet in 2003, the National Sleep Foundation reports that a third of all Americans work more than fifty hours each week. According to the International Labor Organization, Americans now work 1,978 hours annually, a full 350 hours-nine weeks-more than Western Europeans average. Juliet Schor, author of "The Overworked American," estimates that the average American now works 199 hours-five weeks-more each year
than he or she did thirty years ago.

"Medieval peasants worked less than we do," says Take Back Your Time's national coordinator John de Graaf, editor of the upcoming book "Take Back Your Time" (Berrett-Koehler Publishers), to be released this summer. "Don't get me wrong, Take Back Your Time Day is not anti-work. But the fact is that American life has gotten way out of balance. Americans are working harder than ever as they are forced to sacrifice the things that really matter, like good health and a clean environment, active citizenship and social justice, and time for nature and the soul."

"Time is a family value," adds Bill Doherty, a family therapist at the University of Minnesota and co-author of "Putting Family First." "But now families rarely have time to eat dinner together and even our children are being pushed into schedules that used to be reserved for CEOs. Overwork and over-scheduling are weakening the bonds that hold our families together."

"Earth Day" of Time

Jerome Segal, a professor at the University of Maryland and author of "Graceful Simplicity," hopes that on Friday, October 24th, thousands of Americans will participate in teach-ins and other public events to begin a new national non-partisan dialogue about time poverty and what we can do about it.

"The date falls nine weeks before the end of the year, symbolizing the nine full weeks more we work each year compared to our trans-Atlantic neighbors," he adds. "We see it as being like the first Earth Day, which stirred the consciousness of America about what we were doing to the environment. Take Back Your Time Day could do for our overworked, over-scheduled, overstressed lives what Earth Day did for the planet."

NOTE: We can offer experts around the country for you to speak with, and provide b-roll for television.

                            # # #