Thursday, February 26, 2009

Jeffery Sachs on RESULTS global call

RESULTS activists were honored to have Dr Jeffery Sachs address us on a national conference call earlier this month. He gave us some great material to work with and things to chew on. Here's a taste....

"So we have a president who wants to lead, a secretary of state who wants to lead, a budget deficit of enormous proportions where, by the way, they could have said, "OK, instead of $1.4 trillion, we'll have $1.4 trillion plus $10 billion to make sure that the poor don't die from all of this." But they haven't done that yet. And we need to make sure that we do not cause the poor to bear the brunt of this right now and to suffer as all of a sudden, after the trillions, we are told there is not another penny to spend. "
- Dr. Jeffrey Sachs on the RESULTS Global National Conference Call, February 14, 2009.

Listen to and read all of his encouraging words

Monday, February 23, 2009

If You Take a Mouse to DC

For any activist parents out there, a friend and I were joking about how- if you are successful- every step of lobbying seems to lead to more craziness and work. Like the Laura Numeroff "If you give a mouse a cookie" books:

If you take a mouse to a congressional face-to-face meeting, you're going to have to create a presentation and good leave-behind docs.

If your U.S. Representative likes your message and leave-behinds, you'll have to follow up with her staff.

If her staff completes your requests, you should generate media in her district.

If your media gets published, you'll have send it to all related MOC's with handwritten letters, email it to their aides, distribute it to your activist partners and you'll want to invite your local friends to respond to it with letters to the editor.

If they get published, they'll probably get excited and want to go to your rep's town hall meeting with you to ask a question.

If the question gets run on TV with her response, your rep might want to capitalize on the publicity and take action quickly with her colleagues, which means you should get your activist partners in their districts to call on their reps, too.

If enough reps and senators back the issue, you may get your resolution or funding passed.

If your legislation gets passed, you may get invited to the White House to meet the President at a Rose Garden ceremony with Bono and Jeffery Sachs for your part in fighting extreme poverty.

If you get friendly with Bono and Sachs, they'll probably take you to Africa to teach you more about the crushing need for advocacy in eradicating extreme poverty.

If you meet a lot of people living on less than $1 a day and take the time to understand their struggles, then you'll want to help them by taking their stories to people with the power to change things...

....which means you should probably set up a congressional face-to-face meeting! :)