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nosrednaydujThere was a 50501 push to have lobbying of all 435 congresspeople at their offices on the same day. (A 50501 theme. One day, everywhere.) I got an email from a friend who's in the organization saying that my congressional district had very few volunteers and did I want to come. So I signed up. Turned out there were only 8 of us, even though this is an extremely progressive district. It was somewhat "preaching to the choir", but the staffer who met with us was glad we came and took some notes.
There was a half hour chat among the eight of us before the half-hour appointment with the staffer so that we could be either on the same page, or at least know what pages we were on so nobody was surprised with what we might say. The organized theme was "impeach Trump; defund ICE". I'm more on the "defund ICE" side; impeaching Trump now will obviously fail, and they admitted that would be the case. My theory is that as impeachment fails, Trump will say how obviously exonerated he is by this failure to impeach, and it will push headlines in his direction and people will believe him. Their theory is that during the investigation and the arguing about the articles of impeachment in Congress, the headlines will be pushed towards "Trump is a lawbreaker", and people might be pushed in the direction away from Trump. Also, right now there are so many laws being broken by the administration, and there is no recourse other than impeachment, so if we are not impeaching, that implies we are okay with the laws being broken.
Sadly, all of these points are true. We should impeach because otherwise we are complicit; we should not impeach because it will fail and the media will spin that failure the wrong way.
Turned out the organizer for our little delegation had been a speaker at a rally I had been at. So that was sort of cool. In one of the things I said I tried to quote him, and then I realized that might've been him and I said "was that you?" And it was. What I was trying to say was "don't embrace centrism; make sure that you ride the Zohran Mamdani progressive energy." And I was quoting was this guy saying that we need to embrace both the socialists (who had organized the rally) and the more corporate people (like 50501, who organized today's item), because the Democrats aren't going to make it if we stay fractured.
One of the other people brought up the problems that the Democrats are all just saying "no", and not giving something positive to go to. Mamdani was giving people something positive to go to, even if he's not going to succeed in his free childcare etc. plans, he got people thinking more than just "the other side is bad".
Anyway, it was an interesting experience, and very different from the previous things I've been doing.
There was a half hour chat among the eight of us before the half-hour appointment with the staffer so that we could be either on the same page, or at least know what pages we were on so nobody was surprised with what we might say. The organized theme was "impeach Trump; defund ICE". I'm more on the "defund ICE" side; impeaching Trump now will obviously fail, and they admitted that would be the case. My theory is that as impeachment fails, Trump will say how obviously exonerated he is by this failure to impeach, and it will push headlines in his direction and people will believe him. Their theory is that during the investigation and the arguing about the articles of impeachment in Congress, the headlines will be pushed towards "Trump is a lawbreaker", and people might be pushed in the direction away from Trump. Also, right now there are so many laws being broken by the administration, and there is no recourse other than impeachment, so if we are not impeaching, that implies we are okay with the laws being broken.
Sadly, all of these points are true. We should impeach because otherwise we are complicit; we should not impeach because it will fail and the media will spin that failure the wrong way.
Turned out the organizer for our little delegation had been a speaker at a rally I had been at. So that was sort of cool. In one of the things I said I tried to quote him, and then I realized that might've been him and I said "was that you?" And it was. What I was trying to say was "don't embrace centrism; make sure that you ride the Zohran Mamdani progressive energy." And I was quoting was this guy saying that we need to embrace both the socialists (who had organized the rally) and the more corporate people (like 50501, who organized today's item), because the Democrats aren't going to make it if we stay fractured.
One of the other people brought up the problems that the Democrats are all just saying "no", and not giving something positive to go to. Mamdani was giving people something positive to go to, even if he's not going to succeed in his free childcare etc. plans, he got people thinking more than just "the other side is bad".
Anyway, it was an interesting experience, and very different from the previous things I've been doing.
