I’m just back from my evening with Rep. Lynn Woolsey. Quite uplifting.
The event was held at Toby’s Feed Barn in Pt. Reyes Station. Lynn’s district includes large rural areas, and in this small town there aren’t a lot of big halls. So the choice of the feed barn, where we sat on folding chairs and hay bales, was both folksy and practical.
Before the main event there was a reception ($50 a head) with a smaller amount of people. We were served locally grown food which was superb. It was a chance to get some face time with the congresswoman, but aside from purely social stuff I mostly used it to talk with my county supervisor about funding for our local health clinics, of which I am board president, and to meet an interesting fellow who wants to run for state senate. I did toss a snarky question to her—"When are you going to get us out of Iraq?"—in response to which she was kind enough to laugh. What a gal!
When we were all gathered in the main space, she sat on a little platform "in conversation" with Norman Solomon, a local guy and author of a great book called War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. Norman is pretty well informed to say the least, and I’ll just mention here that in a month he’ll be hosting a sneak preview of the movie made from his book as a benefit for... our local health clinics. Things get kind of interwoven in a small town.
I naturally can’t replicate the whole conversation, nor would you want me to, but here are some highlights.
Lynn is co-chair of the congressional Progressive Caucus, along with Barbara Lee. The once-puny caucus has grown to have 72 members now. Lynn, Barbara Lee, and Maxine Waters (three strong women from CA, all from very safe progressive districts) have informally created what she calls the Triad to promote progressive ideas and policies and try to get some truth out there. As she describes it, one or another of them will take the lead at different times, they don’t care about that. She says the Triad plans to go to the first four primary states next year for teach-ins about Iraq, to try to frame the issue more truthfully and intelligently for the candidates, media, and voters. Great idea, hope it gets some traction! Because of this plan, she needs to stay neutral for now and thought it best not to endorse a specific candidate, but she did say—and she stipulated that this is SECRET, so don’t you guys tell anyone—that she wishes Al Gore would get involved.
She mentioned that she has addressed the House 207 times about getting us out of Iraq. These are 5 minute speeches after the regular business of the House is concluded for the day. Typically no one is there to listen, but C-span is there. She said "the rules" prohibit her from mentioning people like GWB by name, and mostly she follows the rules but sometimes she just says it out loud. When that happens, the clerks rein her in but then say privately on the side that they agree with her.
Similarly, in the Democratic caucus she often speaks out quite bluntly and is shut down by the leadership, but afterwards many members come up to say they wish they could have said that. She acknowledges that because she is from a highly progressive district, she can say things in a big voice that others can only whisper. At the same time, she thinks that Dems could be more bold about their statements and votes even if we can’t override a Bush veto (yet). After the event, a couple came over to say they lived in SF (Pelosi’s district) and also have a house here, so what did she think of Pelosi. She was very diplomatic and supportive of Pelosi, who has to be Speaker for the party and the whole country in addition to representing her constituents.
I’ll be honest, she is not a great orator. She does not get a lot of bills passed with her name on them. She has not been awarded the chair of a major committee. But she has stood up for what she believes and what we believe, and she has gone from virtually a lone voice to the champion of a cresting movement. By her willingness to stand up and say what we are all thinking, she has moved the center of the debate a good amount in our direction. And as she said tonight, my paraphrase, it’s not about her getting honors and perks, it’s about getting some truth and sanity back into our government and national dialog. Editorial comment: that's progressive thinking right there.
She is chair of the subcommittee for Workplace Protections, which as you can imagine has been somewhat dormant the last dozen years. I’ll be interested to see what she can do there. She gets it that decent wages, benefits, and working conditions for adult workers translate into better lives for the children of those workers.
She spoke about immigration, trade, national security, media consolidation, environment, Iran, safe food—excellent on everything. Since I was born stupid I didn’t ask her to say something about health care, but I know from other meetings that she is a strong supporter of single payer.
Tidbit for you activists—she says that email is a VERY effective way to lobby your congressperson. It is undeniably there, it swamps the system, and it can be counted. Letters, postcards, faxes are good too, but since the CW I have heard has discounted the effectiveness of email, I’m passing this along.
Perhaps you are wondering where she stands on impeachment. We’ve all heard of useful idiots, and sure enough there were a half-dozen LaRouchies there making their contribution. They wanted to know, at first insistently and then rudely, about impeaching Dick Cheney. This drew the most impassioned expression of the night from Lynn: IF LYNN WOOLSEY AND JOHN CONYERS ARE NOT PURSUING IMPEACHMENT, THEN YOU CAN BE SURE THAT IMPEACHMENT IS NOT WHAT WE SHOULD BE PURSUING (my caps, my paraphrase). The explanation that she offered was that there is too much other important stuff that has to be done, and if impeachment is on the table there is no room for anything else, and even then it would not occur much, if any, sooner than the next election. Pragmatism from the ultimate idealist, but one who knows you have to count votes and months no matter how idealistic you may be.
In the question period, there was discussion of demonstrations in the streets. Lynn said that wild demonstrations are a distraction, people focus on the wildness not on the content of the message, email is better. She also allowed that at some point, might as well just cut loose. The last comment was from an army vet who said that street demonstrations were what stopped the Viet Nam war. He got the biggest applause of the night.