About Voices of the Majority. Previous posts: here. Updated 3/15/18.
Democrat Conor Lamb won yesterday’s special House election in suburban Pittsburgh — my hometown!And to protest congressional inaction on common sense gun violence protections, today students walked out of schools across Bainbridge Island — our home town!Let’s keep the momentum going, by getting together this Friday between 4:30 and 6:30 at OfficeXpats (upstairs in the Pavilion on Madison Avenue).We will:
- Advocate for S-2495
- The House just passed the STOP School Violence Act, which would provide funding to train millions of students and educators – with programs like Sandy Hook Promise’s Know the Signs – to help prevent gun violence and school shootings. But now, we need the Senate to pass this lifesaving bill (S 2495) so it becomes law
- Stand with kids who want to grow up peacefully and not be be shot
- Script: As capable adults, we have a moral obligation to protect kids. Training babies to hide in closets and be quiet isn’t a solution. Arming every underpaid, overworked teacher isn’t viable. It comes down to competent adults deciding whether young lives are more important than profit. I am writing to ask [company] to follow the moral, courageous lead of Dick’s Sporting Goods. Stop selling assault-style weapons. Raise the minimum age. Focus on giving 19 kids every day the future they deserve. Thank you.
- Addresses:
- Ask companies to adopt schools, and fund student travel to the march on 3/24
- Stand with our neighbors, the Dreamers
- Call our 3 MoCs: “I want legislation that gives Dreamers permanent status without building a wall or breaking up families.”
- Defend the EPA
- EPA’s budget has been devastated. Right now, in real dollars, it’s less than half what it was in the late 1970’s — even as our population size has increased by 100 million people and our economy has doubled in size.And President Trump is looking to make a bad problem even worse: He has recklessly proposed further slashing EPA’s budget by nearly a quarter, leaving a budget-starved agency unequipped to carry out its mission of protecting Americans’ health and safety.Tell our Members of Congress: The EPA needs more money, not less. Vote to increase its budget by at least 10% over the next two years.
If you have any doubts that this type of Friday evening phone-calling, postcard-writing and faxing makes any difference, read this about how the NRA wields out-size power in D.C. and 50 state capitols:“Just as important as the money it spends on lobbying and ads, is the way the NRA energizes its base to urge politicians already in office to vote down gun safety legislation, and to pressure manufacturers not to agree to new safety measures. Members are urged to send letters, make calls, and sometimes march. ”Members of Congress “have very little data and are incredibly risk adverse,” says Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and the head of experimental research at PublicMind. “When they get a lot of calls on an issue, that overrides” everything else, he said.