All right, so I had the conference call promised in last night’s diary. The organizers or participating organizations that I heard mentioned were the Reformed Association of Congregations, the UCC and UUA, the Interfaith Alliance, People for the American Way and the NAACP.
No big surprises: they’re targetting the swing vote senators: Murkowski, Snowe, Collins, Hagel, Specter and Warner. (Of those, they’re fairly confident that Collins and Warner are leaning against the nuclear option.) So we had clergy from each of these senators’ states; the ones I heard chime in were a couple of UU’s from Maine and a couple of Reformed Rabbis in Pennsylvania.
More below the flip.
The tactics aren’t much of a surprise, either: they’d like us to:
- Make phone calls to Senate Offices–both in DC and in Home Districts
- Write LTEs or Op-Eds
- Pass out some information to our congregations (I’m taking a pass on this one, since my only “congregation” is here.)
- Organize visits to Senate Offices
Someone also mentioned that impromptu press conferences are an effective way to get some attention.
The organizers had some suggestions for angles to take:
- America works best when no one party has absolute power
- Removing the checks and balances installed by our founding fathers is a serious mistake
- Americans esteem bipartisanship, and are pretty solidly set against the nuclear option
- Preserving the filibuster protects minority rights–it respects minority perspectives and allows them to be heard (the NAACP, as you can imagine, takes this angle particularly seriously)
- Though the Republicans say this about a “fair vote” on these justices, they’re pretty clearly looking ahead to a SCOTUS battle–and to ramming through their agenda without judicial opposition
- Senators should lead by example: do we want to teach our kids that the way to get what you want is to change the rules halfway through the game?
So, like I said, no real surprises. What can you do? Well:
- Click here to send an e-mail or fax to one of your senators, particularly if they’re one of the ones listed above, or
- Click here to send them a letter or
- here to find their phone number.
Warning: those last two links are stolen from the Traditional Values Coalition, under the theory of using the opponent’s resources against them.
And of course, you can do any of the action items listed up top. The organizers of this call stressed that national pols listen to religious leaders from their home turf, as well as current or former elected officials. If you’ve got a way to get their attention, by all means, do so.
Well, all of this is not exactly news. In fact, it’s downright dull.
So let’s jazz things up a little. Give me an example in the comments below of what not do in a LTE or phonecall or meeting with your Senator. I’ll start us off.