ECUMENICAL ADVOCACY DAYS
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| Fr. Rocco and other advocates with Congressman McGovern |
Hello Everyone,
I just got back from Washington DC. The Ecumenical Advocacy Days (EAD) were the best yet… it was our 10th anniversary and everything about this weekend from Friday to Monday went better than ever.
Much of what went on is already on the EAD website www.advocacydays.org
I would invite everyone to also look at faithfulbudget.org which is the focus for our Monday visits with Staffers for the Senators and Congresspersons. We had a three person Massachusetts delegation there and we visited the offices of both Senator Brown and Senator Kerry. Both staffers were open to “the Faithful Budget”… except when it came to revenues from Browns office.. but it seemed he was open to maintaining the safety nets, etc…(how to pay for them all is another question if there are no revenues coming in….)…. We visited the offices of Congressmen Michael Capuono and Stephen Lynch and spoke to their staffers. We did get an appointment with Congressman McGovern and he kept us for 40 minutes…. (I think there were lobbyists outside and he would rather chat with us than deal with them…)…. It was a good meeting with him… we josted on the Africa policy when it comes to folks like Joseph Kony, etc…. but we were respectful… He favors military action to apprehend Kony and others… I shared with him how impossible that has been in the past and futile for the present and future… The Africans can deal with him better on their own without our help….
The dates for next year are April 5th through 8th…. the 8th will be the lobby day visits…. the theme for the conference will be announced towards the end of May or so…. It was very well worth the time.. AND for those who are new to lobby visits, the trainings were excellent this year… much of the material is there on the website, but it was presented through skits and Q & A, and many new folks to lobbying found this very helpful….. Now we are to “take it home” and visit the members’ offices locally…. There may be a webinar come September that will revisit this year’s ask and theme to get folks geared for the election in November…. I will share more at our April chapter if people are interested.
All the best
Fr. Rocco Puopolo, SX
