On August 5th Michael, Farah and I set out in the park to work on our daily task: giving out postcards and alerting park-goers about our campaign. Farah went around the Loop Drive, because of the great response we had received there to our Street Theater on Saturday. Michael went up the West Drive to Center Drive. I went around the Long Meadow.

Throughout the day, I tried a new approach at getting postcards. My prior days had not gone as well as I expected and it discouraged me, but I still went out and tried my best. I approached joggers, and running alongside them while suggesting I write their information on the postcard myself. I noticed that a lot of runners supported the cause but did not want to stop running. I received a great response from this. I also got a lot of feedback from dog walkers and babysitters. They were very enthusiastic about making the park safer for the dogs they walk and the children the babysat.

I did have a unique conversation with somebody near the picnic house. When I asked a young woman with a baby and her friends to sign a postcard for a car-free park, one of her friends complained about the behavior of bikers in the park. She said they were really rude and they felt like the park is just for them when it's supposed to be for everyone. I almost didn't know what to say. Our manager had warned us this issue might come up but I didn't think it would happen this early or quickly. Just then, I came up with a brilliant response. I said: If the cars are out the parks that would make more room for the bikers in the bigger lane, therefore they wouldn't have to fight with pedestrians for space in the smaller lanes. When I said that, the woman immediately signed my postcard and wished me good luck.

I was really excited at the end of the day when everybody met back up and I counted all of the postcards to Mayor Bloomberg I had gotten signed. I felt really good about my results and now I feel so much more confident about talking to people about what I believe; every reason why cars should not be in our park.

So after a long, grueling day of walking around the park, we went to the 3rd Street Entrance, where we set up for our test of the day. We planned to count how many cars came into the park after permitted hours. We got the idea from one of the StreetFilms we saw during our orientation, which counted the number of cars entering the park afterhours and expected to have a great response. As the clock hit 7:00pm, we waited for our first violator. We counted 5 cars before the Parks Department came and closed off the park. We were really surprised and did not expect this to happen. But nevertheless, the Park's Department was on-point today; they closed the gates at exactly 7:03. I guess we will have to catch park violators another day.