The Declaration of Peace National Conference Call on August 4, 2008
Keep Peace for Iraq in the Forefront
Timothy Baer:
Welcome to the call!
This evening’s conference call welcomes activists and organizers from across the country. We’ll be discussing and sharing information about:
Talking with our members of Congress: Keeping Peace for Iraq in the Forefront (of the 2008 Election Campaign and in the 110th Congress).
Overview – Agenda
The call will probably last more than an hour. More like 75 minutes depending on how many are sharing ideas, suggestions, and experiences that are helpful to others.
~ Everyone who wants to speak about this evening’s topic, will have an opportunity to do so later in this call. Please hold your questions or comments until the designated time.
To speak: just say your name and “Stack”.
To mute your line while others are speaking, press * 6.
To unmute to speak, press * 6 again.
The agenda for the call is as follows:
Introductions
We’ll hear Kate Gould from FCNL speak about communicating with members of Congress about Peace for Iraq. She’ll share tips and resources for better communication with your Rep. and Senators.
Questions for Kate
Christine Glaser will speak about “Working the Media for Peace”
Questions or clarifications related to Media work
Open it up to hear from you. We’d like you to share your ideas and experiences related to meeting with and communicating with your Congress person, doing media outreach, planning successful events, and your plans for the upcoming Congressional recess
• Introductions: People introduce themselves by their region:
Northeast – Southeast – Midwest and Central – Northwest – Southwest
Participants say their name, the city or town they’re in, and what activist group or organization they work with. Welcome everyone!
Timothy Baer, Bloomington, IN – The Declaration of Peace & Bloomington Peace Action Coalition
Christine Glaser, Bloomington, IN – The Declaration of Peace & Bloomington Peace Action Coalition
Kate Gould, Washington D.C. - Friends Committee on National Legislation Program Assistant for Foreign Policy (Middle East)
Andrew Sawtelle, Providence, RI - The Declaration of Peace & American Friends Service Committee
Activist #1, Indianapolis, IN – American Friends Service Committee
Activist #2, Harrisburg, PA
Activist #3, Wrentham, MA
Activist #4, Milwaukee, WI
Activist #5, Washington D.C. - Washington Peace Center
Activist #6, Middleburg, KY
Activist #7, Charlotte, NC
Activist #8, Santa Fe, NM - Pledge for Peace
Activist #9, Long Island, NY
FCNL Tips and Resources
Timothy: At this time, I’d like to Introduce Kate Gould, Program Assistant for Foreign Policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation and she is a member of the FCNL Iraq Peace Team.
Kate, we’d like to hear you speak about tips for communicating with members of Congress especially over the next few weeks during recess. And about what resources FCNL has available, related to this work.
Kate Gould: Congress will be in recess from August 8 to September 8, then back for only three weeks, then out of Washington again for election campaigning.
(Kate explains about a few of the resources that are available at the FCNL website, related to meeting with and lobbying Congress persons.)(See a full list of resources here.)
Although funding has been voted on until Spring 2009, we’re expecting that there will be a funding vote in February 2009, soon after the new Congress is installed.
Now, about half of the constituent contacts from Congress happen through e-mail. In-person lobby visits are quite rare. We’ve heard some good stories of members of Congress withdrawing from HCR 362, the “Iran Blockade Bill”, the hot Middle East issue right now, the one most likely to be brought up in September. 260 members have co-sponsored it right now. The bill asks to inspect all traffic in and out of Iran, additional sanctions, and blocking travel of Iranian officials.
Make sure that your representative knows about any kind of grassroots education efforts you’re doing. Create a long-term relationship with your member of Congress. Get to know their aides and their positions.
Aides always read letters-to-the-editor page in local papers. That’s a good barometer for them to see where public attention is. If you want to make sure your message gets to your member, mention your member of Congress by name and what’s relevant about them. Thank them, ask them to change, anything.
Regarding the Iran bill, 4 members have withdrawn their co-sponsorship, and 3 have said explicitly that they will not vote for it if the blockade language is not taken out. Withdrawing co-sponsorship is a big deal. UFPJ posted the story about William Lacy Clay taking his name off, directly due to activist pressure.
Most of the people who meet with Congress have a lot of money and are big campaign supporters, so grassroots activists are really important.
Timothy: Like Kate mentioned, we’re encouraging people to find out when their members of Congress are having town hall meetings. Let’s open things up to questions for a few minutes.
Questions for Kate:
Activist #6 asks for FCNL website.
It is http://www.fcnl.org/
Activist #1: Where can we see where our Reps are on the bills so far?
Kate: thomas.gov has any bill by number. Just to make sure, the bill is HCR 362, not HR362. HR is about scholarships, HCR is about Iran. This is a resolution, so it’s not binding, which your Rep will likely tell you, but it still sends a strong message.
Activist #1: Should we target our efforts on people who have already cosponsored?
Kate: Yes. We have a list of members who are most likely to pull their names. There are lots of progressive members on the bill, like John Lewis and Janice Schakowsky, Jesse Jackson Jr., names like that. Remember, they cannot add or delete their name during recess, so the record won’t show that until they get back.
Activist #7: I spoke with someone in my member’s office about this. Could you tell what exactly they’re blocking Iran for?
Kate: The stated purpose is to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. I think most members thought this was a sanctions bill, which is very popular. Iran depends on imported refined oil for 40% of its energy consumption, so sanctions would affect that.
Activist #7: The member said it was about the centrifuges, which Iran has now said it’s making on its own. I told my member that Iran has 20 tons of yellowcake, which is only enough to make 20 weapons, but it would take 20 years with the number of centrifuges they have. Most countries will test 9 weapons before they know they can reliably use one. That means we’re looking ten years out at minimum. I think Congress is trying to take the Iraq War off the people’s minds with this bill.
Kate: Just to let you know, this bill is not binding and doesn’t require any particular action by the administration. I don’t think the administration is stupid enough to create a blockade, but it does send a really dangerous message. Regional diplomacy is really important to deal with what’s going on in Iraq. All these proxy wars and influence by Iran are destabilizing Iraq, and this bill would only add to that.
Activist: I’d like to think that you’re right, but I think there’s a good chance of some aggression against Iran. There’s a large oil deposit on the Iraq-Iran border. To clarify, this is HCR 362.
[Kate: Yes. H Con Res 362.] Is there a similar bill in the Senate [Kate: S Res 580. The worst language is in the House version, but the Senate one does ask the President to impose extremely draconian sanctions, the 40% of Iran’s energy consumptions.]
Kate: Talking to Congress about sanctions on Iran is very hard. Only 14 members voted against the last sanctions bill in the House. You can argue that these particular sanctions would be so draconian, and also ask your member to support direct talks with Iran. A lot of these members are in Out of Iraq Caucus and vote against war funding, but they’re on these bills. We need to convince candidates that we don’t need troops in Iraq to deter Iran. There’s lots of bogus talk about not giving Iraq over to Iran, but that represents political will, and diplomacy becomes more important.
Activist: What are the recess dates?
Kate: Recess starts this Friday, and it ends September 8.
Timothy: Moving on, Christine Glaser will talk about media work. First, a quick easy way to find who is a cosponsor is http://www.fcnl.org/iran, which has full information about legislation. You can write to members of Congress through the website, either emails or faxes.
Kate: We have a paper that outlines the different kinds of Congressional communications and how important they are considered. In-person is best, form emails and petitions are least considered. Hand-written letters take an extra two weeks for anthrax screenings. Phone calls to aides are also very good. Personalization of any kind goes a long way.
“Working the Media for Peace”
Timothy: Christine Glaser is a member of the DoP National Coordinating Body and is convener of the Education Committee, and is the primary author of the Comprehensive Peace Plan for Iraq.
Christine: My information looks over the next few months until the elections. Here’s how you can make the most out of the events you might be planning by using the media available to you.
[Christine enumerates a number of methods to work the media and publicize meeting with Congress members and other peace events.] (See full discourse here.)
Any questions?
Activist #2: I’m frustrated about writing letters to the editor in newspapers, that aren’t printed. How do you address that?
Timothy: One way is to refer to something they already published. Look for the most recent article they posted about Iraq. Reference that and then focus on what you want to. Some papers will really cut off things they don’t want, but if enough people write about an issue they may still print it.
Activist #8: Any more references for the Cities for Peace?
[Christine: Yes. Google Cities for Peace. Kate: Institute for Policy Studies and CODEPINK has info.]
Timothy: You can find out about meetings members of Congress are planning during the Congressional recess.
a. Go to Congress member’s website, where they may announce upcoming meetings through RSS Feeds, Press releases, Announcements. The Congressional websites will typically be updated as often as every day. There may be nothing on Monday, but there may be something on Tuesday day announcing a meeting taking place on Wednesday. (Look at other Congress man’s websites.) The announcement are often on short notice, as short as the day before. We recommend that you look at the website of your member of Congress daily and then share the information with your network (via e-mails or phone calls) and encourage people to come and speak about Peace for Iraq.
b. Sign up now for Congress members’ e-mail updates. You can do it through their websites. All members of Congress have this available. They do not necessarily announce meetings in e-mail updates, but some members of Congress may.
c. Another avenue of finding out about meetings and forums is to sign up with a political party’s e-mail list, whether Republican or Democrat. Congress members often send announcements to those lists because they usually want supportive people at the meetings.
d. Of course meetings/forums are frequently announced in newspaper, but sometimes only a day or two prior to event, but you may have to search for the information. It may be more prominently displayed in small town papers, less in regional papers.
e. The most direct way is to call one of the local offices of your member of Congress (the district office). They may not tell you about tentative meetings, only about scheduled meetings. Once again, you will need to call frequently, whether that is once a week or two or three times a week. Call the staffers frequently, since they often get updates at the last minute as well. These events are usually handled by schedulers and other staffers and that information don’t always get to the other staffers.
f. I can’t emphasize enough, that meetings, formal or informal, are often only announced on short notice, and therefore you have to be diligent in finding out when they are happening.
How about ideas from you about meeting with members, or good questions or statements to make to them? Our power is often in our words and particular ways we phrase things. Also, any news of successful meetings in the past.
Activist #7: Postcards calling for impeachment and supporting The Constitution. Go on conservative radio stations. Talk about the truth on Iraq, Iran, and U.S. policy.
Activist #5: Here in D.C. with Washington Peace Center we’re forming the Iran Working Group. Public education campaign: having a teach-in at a local campus at the beginning of September, circulating information about the Iran bills. We have a complete breakdown and rebuttal of 362 on our website, showing all the falsehoods in the bills. We also bring Iranian-Americans to our meetings with Congress, showing the human side of Iran, that we’re talking about a civil society that is being modernized, and a strong youth movement, and saying that sanctions would do what they did to Iraq. You’re pushing the people behind the government, which is not where they’d naturally be. If you want to effect change, sanctions are the wrong way to go, and a blockade is an act of war. Seymour Hersch talked about talk in Cheney’s office of putting Americans on boats that look like Iranian PT boats and having them shoot at American ships.
Activist #6: The administration and politicians who support it have long used Iran as a bogeyman. Has there ever been an instance where Iran has started an attack on another country, either recently or ever?
Activist #5: We overthrew Mossadeq in 1953, and he was democratically elected. They haven’t attacked another country in 200 years.
Christine: We know that Congress has funded terrorist groups within Iran to destabilize the regime there. There’s more information about that, a chapter in the Comprehensive Peace Plan on our website, which talkes about the oil issue and effecting regime change, since that’s what they’re really after. Iran has violated no international law in seeking new
Activist #2: Any idea about the possible funding coming up in February?
Kate: It’s just expected that the $170 billion they did approve will run out in March, so the new President will be talking about wanting more money for the troops.
Activist #2: I’ve found FCNL to be one of the best sites for information and action. Another question. You mentioned 3 members of the House are mentioning dropping cosponsorship?
Kate: Barney Frank – MA; Wexler – FL; Thompson - CA. They’ve said not that they’re considering dropping their co-sponsorship, but that they will not vote for it if the language is not amended. Frank says he regrets putting his name on the bill. After he said that a number of members have said they have problems with the bill. Clause 3 is most problematic. It’s a short bill, I’d encourage that you read it, though most members of Congress haven’t. Pete from Washington mentioned all the other problems with the bill, and we wouldn’t support it anyhow, but it would be a big victory if that clause was changed.
Christine: A wrap-up of the main theme of this talk is why keep Iraq in the forefront over the next few months. Congress remains the focus, since Congress has the power and authority to start and end wars. They are responsible for funding it and they can’t wiggle out of it. Legislation in the past to oppose permanent bases has not been effective. Congress needs a way to make this effective.
Another point in the visits is that a majority of the country wants the soldiers to come home. The majority of Iraqis and the Iraqi Parliament want all personnel out. This is not widely known in Congress. Two parliamentarians came to US Congrespeople recently, and they were surprised that the parliament is overwhelmingly against any US presence. This information is also available and referenced and sourced in the Peace Plan.
Another point to address is to insist that the withdrawal must be complete. Several attempts in funding bills have been made to attach withdrawal measures, but there are several conditions like training Iraqis, fighting terrorism, protecting permanent bases, and so on. Training Iraqis means training specific factions to help share the oil wealth with US oil companies.
The Peace Plan is on the website, and also has talking points to help talk to members of Congress.
The staff is often less informed than you are, so don’t assume that they know something that you do. Don’t be afraid to pass on information to them.
Timothy: We’re planning to have another conference call in a couple of weeks, and hope to hear from you about visits and meetings and public events that you have.