The Power of Protest

A group of FCNLers traveled to New York on April 29 to participate in the United for Peace (UFP) march. The theme was supposed to be simple – no more wars and stop the current one. Well, as inevitably happens, a number of other laudable causes were tacked on including universal health care, immigrants’ rights, civil liberties and privacy, nuclear weapons et cetera.

Many protesters asked me to plaster their bodies with War is not the answer stickers.

Despite the multiple themes, our reason for being there – bringing the War is not the answer message – was well placed and well received. The march was a success -- in case you don't happen to get the NY Times Metro section at home -- and I personally was impressed with the turnout.

I also had a blast, and of course also took the opportunity to enjoy some New York sights and sounds. FCNL was circulating a petition on the Biden amendment which prohibits funds appropriated in the emergency supplementary appropriations bill from being used to make permanent bases in Iraq or control its natural resources. FCNL and a number of other organizations and prominent people think that the US needs to tell Iraqis that we will not be there forever. The amendment passed, and while I’m no stranger to cynicism, this is a great step.

The best part for me was talking with young people though. While I was going around with the petition, I was overwhelmed by the number of people there. My strategy was to talk only with young people. I wanted to tell them about what was going on in DC and hopefully peak some interest. Despite only getting to a handful of the thousands there, I think that I was successful. I walked around with the petition and chatted with groups of people eating food, chatting, picking nats out of each other’s hair, playing cards and the like. I asked them if they knew what was going on in DC about the war. I told them about the Biden amendment and how I thought it was an important message to send to the Iraqis and the billions of other people alienated by the US and its aggression. I also gave them information on how to lobby and talked about how it was important to make phone calls, write and visit their representatives. Many also had much to say about their frustrations with politics in DC and what they thought about war.

I was energized and encouraged. I came away from the march excited – about the energy and enthusiasm of the people I talked to and the creativity of the protesters. I talked to people who had never voted before, some who had clearly voted many times, and some who didn't even have a vote. We were united in our enthusiasm to send our message to Washington through the march and through our vote.

For more coverage, check out http://www.april29.org/article.php?id=3266.

The Void on the Hill

So, I’ve finally started to lobby. Last Monday and Tuesday, Ruth and I began lobbying on the NSA Oversight Act, introduced by Representatives Jeff Flake (AZ) and Adam Schiff (CA) in the House. It’s an interesting bill, I think, mostly because its main purpose is to reiterate what is already the law. Now, call me crazy, but Congress shouldn’t ever be in the position of having to remind the president that they had already written a law about something. Anyway, that’s the state we’re in, so I guess we’ve got to live with it.

The NSA oversight act does a couple of almost interesting things beyond reiterating what is already the law. It makes explicit that the domestic wiretapping was not authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which has been one of the administration’s justifications for the NSA program. It also requires classified briefings to the full intelligence committees in both the House and the Senate (which, I believe, is also already the law). And, it requests the president to propose new legislation if, indeed, the current FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) law is not fitting the bill.

Lobbying is a funny thing. There are supposedly tens of thousands of lobbyists in Washington . For the most part the profession doesn’t have the greatest of reputations (for one Abramoff reason or another). And how many organizations have their national offices in Washington , DC ? Given this, and the fact that the spying scandal broke in the headlines more than four months ago, you’d think that somebody would have already visited the offices that we visited last week. Wouldn’t you think that if the president was breaking the law, claiming unprecedented powers, spying on people in the United States without any check, wrecking constitutional balances, that there’d be someone on the Hill lobbying against that? I mean, that’s what I thought. But I was wrong.

This means that there’s a lot of space up on the hill for you too. So, come to a lobby training, train your friends, and go sit down with your legislator. Growing up I always thought that there were people down in Washington doing that work. It turns out, there really aren’t, or at least there aren’t many. And that means that it’s your turn to step up, walk in that Congressman’s office, sit down with a notepad and start changing the world. Because nobody’s going to do it for you.