Updated to include link to Roots Project Orientation
This is my first diary post so be gentle.
The California Roots Project group had our first meetings with our Senators yesterday. As many of you probably know, Firedoglake has been loosely organizing, or maybe encouraging is a better word, groups of volunteers to write letters to the editor, visit their congress critters and take other actions at the state level. Massachusetts started off the trend of visiting Kerry and Kennedy, and Washington and New York have followed. Yesterday eight of us from northern California had meetings with aides of our two Senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.
We organized this in about two weeks. We had a fair amount of e-mail chit chat and then held a conference call. We used
freeconferencecall.com, which worked great for us. During the call it became clear that the overwhelming issue for most of us right now was Iran and the threat of a preemptive nuclear attack. However, we wanted to frame it in somewhat broader terms that tied in with our other concerns, so we decided to build it around asking for Congress to do its job and be an equal part of government and serve as an effective check and balance against the administration. We decided on who would be our spokes people and how to split up the work, one person to call the Senators offices and make the appointments, three people worked on drafting a statement and outline of what we wanted to convey at the meeting and since I live in San Francisco I chased down addresses, maps, public transit connections as so forth. One of us who couldn't make the meeting is a physicist who has been working within the physics community to prepare materials about the effects of a nuclear strike and why it was a bad idea. Senator Feinstein in particular is fairly knowledgeable about these issues but we decided not to use the materials directly in our discussions but to leave them as examples as the sort of research and communications skills that the blog community could muster at short notice.
I was on the street car going up the Embarcadero, when I heard someone asking the driver for the Chestnut Street stop, which is what I had suggested that people unfamiliar with the city do. So I introduced myself and asked if she was part of the Roots Project and we started in talking immediately. We walked together over to Senator Boxer's office where we found another person waiting on a bench and within a few minutes most of us were there. It was the first time any of us had actually met, so we spent awhile getting acquainted and going over what we wanted to say and frankly nerving each other up to go confront the beast.
The beast, i.e., Senator Boxer's aide, turned out to be quite friendly and we ended up having a good discussion. At first she was a bit guarded but after she found out that we were not there to yell at her but to support Senator Boxer in leading the Congress and the Democrats to resist the push to war, she became much more relaxed. We talked about Yearly Kos, which she knew about and where Senator Boxer will be speaking. It turned out that about half of us were planning on going and we suggested that it would be a great event for congressional aids, in particular, to attend. I suggested that the Senator write a blog post, only to learn that she had just done so that morning, which I had not had a chance to read. We talked a bit about podcasting and learned that some of Senator Boxer's younger aides were already working on it. We also talked a bit about the depth of expertise and rapid research that has become available to the blogging community and suggested that this was a valuable resource for the Senator. We exchanged cards and e-mail addresses and left behind a contact list of 19 people, which included both those who attended the meeting and those that couldn't make it but had read our statement and wanted to be represented in the meeting. By the end of the meeting we had agreed that we would contact her again to follow up on this and other issues.
We had some time between the two meetings and it was a glorious day in San Francisco, clear and warm after a 102 year old record breaking spell of cold and rain. (Maybe that's a good sign; it certainly helped set the mood.) We spent some time talking about other actions we would like to take. One that came up was sending copies of Glenn Greenwald's new book to the Senators and for each of us to send a copy to their Representative. We also talked about some California issues including verified voting and some very strange goings on in the Secretary of State's office, the clean elections bill that's currently before the state legislature and the push to have the California legislature pass an impeachment resolution like those that are being presented in Illinois and Vermont.
One of us is a young film student from Berkeley and he brought his video gear and was filming us as we talked. We were all nervous about this beforehand and in discussing it decided that we definitely did not want to film the sessions with the aides as that would be too confrontational and because they were meeting with us willingly. I in particular seem to have the knack of looking like a complete goofus when anyone points a camera at me but in the end it was cool. Everyone was pretty relaxed and as we took the street car down the Embarcadero to the Financial District we continued to talk and he continued to film us.
We had lunch together at an out of the way place that one of us remembered from when she used to work down there and continued talking and getting to know one another. Our cover was pretty much blown from the outset however, because we weren't scurrying around as purposefully as the other denizens. But as I said the weather was great and we had a good time.
After lunch we walked over to Senator Feinstein's office, which was much more formal than Senator Boxer's. We had to show picture ID and get printed name tags in order to go upstairs. It turned out to be "take your child to work day" so there were free sundaes being served but we all heroically resisted. You don't want to meet you Senator with goo in your beard, which is what happened to me at the ice cream social at work. We were all a little surprised at the security at both offices. You first enter into a sort of glass box before you can go into the real offices. I don't know if it's to check you out visually or see if you're radioactive or what.
Senator Feinstein's aid was perhaps even more cautious at first but again, once it became clear we were not there to yell at her, there was a complete change in attitude. She expressed surprise that we and the people we were talking to, thought that an attack on Iran was more or less a done deal that was going to happen unless it could somehow be stopped. She asked why we were coming to her (and Senator Feinstein) because the Republicans were the real problem. We told her that we wanted Senator Feinstein to be more active and more visible as a leader, since she has great credibility on national security issues and is seen as a centrist. We also told her that the Roots Project had in fact started in very Republican dominated states to bring local pressure to bear on some of the worst offenders. We talked about ways to get better and wider distribution of Senator Feinstein's very powerful statement regarding Iran in the Sunday L.A. Times a week ago. She was very interested when we suggested that Senator Feinstein herself write an occasional blog post and with our unanimous opinion that such a post would receive very wide attention and interest. We told her about the other members of congress that have blogged and she asked us to send her links to those and to some blogs we would recommend. We mentioned Glenn Greenwald's book going from #50,000 to #1 on Amazon in one day as the result of publicity on a hand full of blogs. We talked again about Yearly Kos, which she seemed to be unaware of but she was interested and we agreed to send her further information. We again talked about the idea of sending some of the congressional aids as well. We left contact information and exchanged cards etc. as before and she was also open to having another meetings.
After that we went our separate ways. I did a few errands and by the time I got home there had already been quite a bit of e-mail traffic within the group. I think everybody was jazzed and wants to continue doing things like this and I think we will also branch out into some within California issues as well.
I have had a couple experiences in my (political) life that I would heartily recommend to anyone who has the opportunity. One is to strike fear into a major corporation. Another is to stand on the Mall in Washington DC with your chosen tribe. To that list I would add, go visit you Senators and Representatives. We don't know and sometimes you never will know how much influence you have or what the tipping point really is but we all came out of the meetings feeling, as hackneyed as that phrase has become, "empowered". We also now want to follow up with similar meetings with our Representatives. In particular, there were several San Franciscans who want to follow up with a visit to Nancy Pelosi.
Softail
Update
For more information about the Roots Project and how to participage go to Roots Project Orientation