Back   OpEd News
Font
PageWidth
Original Content at
https://www.opednews.com/articles/The-People-Lobby-Nails-Dow-by-Joan-Brunwasser-Activism_Globalization-NAFTA_Interviews_Lobbyists-K-Street-140119-28.html
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

January 19, 2014

The People Lobby Nails Down The Senate Finance Committee On The Trans Pacific Partnership

By Joan Brunwasser

What this new resource empowers you to do is make a public record of what the congressional aides you speak to are saying, to cut though all the puff about where they actually stand and whether or not we, the people, can count on their vote, and to demand that they vote in our interest. Just like the name says, the intent is to make the voice of the people a real lobbying force for the first time.

::::::::

People Power: The People Lobby
People Power: The People Lobby
(Image by The People Lobby)
  Details   DMCA

My guest is progressive political activist, the PEN. Welcome back, PEN. 

Joan Brunwasser: You've been very active in getting the word out about the fast-tracking of the Trans Pacific Partnership. You and I have talked about it a lot lately*. For those readers not yet familiar with the TPP, what is it, why is it so bad and what's so urgent?

PEN: The only reason we know it's so bad is that there are leaked documents which have surfaced about what they are planning.  The worst of it is that they are proposing a new maxim of international law, which would define as "indirect expropriations" any national law intended to protect the environment, labor, privacy, etc.  It represents, for example, a new corporate RIGHT to pollute and the power to collect damages from anyone who resists, on the logic that corporations are entitled to profit from polluting the environment and to collect damages as their estimated lost profits if prevented from doing so.  And that's just the start of the horrible stuff they are trying to pack into this thing.  No wonder they are doing everything to keep it all the most extreme secret, and to fast track it without any real scrutiny.

JB: Yikes! What have you been doing and how's that going?

PEN: Of course there are many groups fired up about this.  For our part, our own participants just through our own action pages have already generated upwards of 20,000 protest messages altogether, EACH going to at least their own three members of Congress. And we are also cc'ing the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways And Means Committee, which they are also trying to bypass even with their deceptive fast track proposal.  And it is clear that all of these protests are having an impact, at least it is slowing them down.

But we also have some unique capabilities that we have brought on line expressly for this fight.  The latest addition to this is our new People Lobby congressional call logging interface.  There are many people who are motivated to actually call their members of Congress on the phone about policy questions.  What this new resource empowers you to do is make a public record of what the congressional aides you speak to are saying, to cut through all the puff about where they actually stand and whether or not we, the people, can count on their vote, and to demand that they vote in our interest.  Just like the name says, the intent is to make the voice of the people a real lobbying force for the first time.

JB: Explain exactly how this works. Give us an example, please. 

PEN: OK, let's say you call their offices now and they give you some bogus runaround, and you hang up and you say to yourself, "Wow, I wish I could tell someone else about this."  Now you can.  You make notes of what happened in the call in the new People Lobby interface, which has tabs for each of your own members of Congress, and it gets posted blog comment style for everyone else in your own district to see.  In this way, we can very quickly document who is just blowing hot air at us, and even who doesn't even bother to answer the phone at all.

JB: And this gathering of data, district by district,  is displayed how? 

PEN: Right under the compact input form is a running display, most recent notes recorded on the top, of the results of each call.  And you can also check off whether the member of Congress has committed to support the will of the people, and that is displayed too, with color coded dots and also a running percentage tally.

JB: Okay, let's take this a bit farther, PEN. This sounds really good and I know you guys have been working overtime to make this available. But, if publicity is one of the few things that actually affects our elected officials, how do THEY know that their comments are being monitored and publicized?  In other words, where's the other side of the equation? We may know that they're hiding from us or promoting bad policy, but how do they know that we know? 

PEN: I'll get to the long term impact in just a second, but the primary deception in the offices of members of Congress is to PRETEND that their calls are not going they way they actually are.  So we instantly cut through all that.  And the big payoff comes election time when we absolutely plan to make available all their histories.  So for example, people will be able to see that Congressperson X voted the wrong way despite getting Y number of documented calls going the other.

JB: That makes sense. And it seems like members of Congress would become familiar with and fear the power of this tool. That's good. Let them be very afraid. I understand that despite all the secrecy regarding the TPP fast-track, you've discovered some very important and disturbing news. Or should I say, one of your citizen journalists discovered this. Please tell us more.

PEN: It's so beautiful the way it is working already, just like we dreamed it would.  One of our first callers to the Senate Finance Committee, our participant advocate, Maggie, really jammed their aides and got to the truth of the matter: that there are no real, open hearings planned even   for consideration of the TPP fast track proposal.  At most they are going to have a couple "executive sessions" with minimal notice to the public, inadequate disclosure of what is to be discussed, and testimony only from a couple self-serving industry stooges, if any.  The whole process is just a complete, honking fraud.  And kudos to our valiant Maggie for nailing them down on all this.  And you can read for yourself the details she uncovered at http://www.peoplelobby.org


JB: Kudos to Maggie. What's a participant advocate? Is she just a regular person who used your tool to push for the truth? And if so, I don't get how she forced the aides to reveal facts that all the powers that be want left uncovered. It's a great thing but the how is still a bit sketchy. 

PEN:  It's real simple.  You ask them questions, and they either lie or else they don't lie.  And if they lie about things you can get answers to other ways, like whether there was a notice or not, or whether documents were available or not, you can call them out on it.  If people will go to the People Lobby interface they can see from her notes (click on the Senate Finance tab when you get there) exactly how Maggie, a regular person, did it.  And it's a model for what any dedicated person can do in the same way.  But even to make a call and demand their vote straight up, that's the new ingredient in the equation, what special interest lobbyists do all the time in the back rooms, but now we the people will do it in a publicly accessible forum.  

We have set this up so you have to log in before you see any of this.  This is necessary so we can identify who is creating the notes which are being logged, and to protect the integrity of the resource.  So please complete the simple signup process and you'll be able to see it all and fully participate.  Once you log in, the interface automatically determines your own members of Congress from the street address you provide, and that is how you see the entries relevant to your own purported representatives.

JB: Yes, PEN, I logged in and saw what you're referring to, that is, Maggie's notes.  Very interesting.  I guess my question is: How does the average citizen with a not very good grasp of this topic know what exactly to ask? Whom to ask it of? 

PEN:  You don't have to possess the natural bulldog investigative reporter instincts of someone like Maggie, who did a spectacular job of following up.  All that is really required of the average person is just call, "ask" for their vote, and record their response in their notes.  It's really magical how quickly the pattern forms for all to see.

JB: And what's the timeline? How quickly do they mean to stuff this down the public's collective throat?

PEN: Our fear of course was they would jam this fast track thing through without anyone even noticing.  That's not going to happen.  Senator Harry Reid made a statement midweek noting the growing "controversy" over this.  Our job is not to get complacent, but to crank up the heat even further.  180 members of the House have signed one of the letters protesting fast track, and it's bipartisan.  We need to ask Senators also to show the leadership to create parallel protest letters in that chamber. 

JB: What do we need to derail this abominable legislation? 

PEN: All that is required, all that is ever required, is for the people to continue to speak out, and not just "trust" the corporate PR that passes for the positions of so many members of Congress. 

JB:  This truly is NAFTA on steroids. Anything to add before we wrap this up, PEN? 

PEN:  We have a question for you.  Was it easy to get set up on the People Lobby page?  Were you able to get right in?

JB: Yes, once I figured out the password issue, it was pretty easy.  And there were my members of Congress. It just took a minute. AND, lo and behold, there was a customized question for each member of Congress, the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee, which really makes this a piece of cake. No one has to scratch his head or think too hard about what to ask. Two examples: "Can we count on Senator Mark Kirk to vote against fast track for the TPP?" or "Can we count on the Senate Finance Committee to hold full, open hearings on the TPP?" And you get the names of the people you talk to and record what they commit to or don't. Pretty clear, pretty straight forward, PEN.

PEN: You heard it, folks.  It just takes a minute and you'll be ready to participate in the new People Lobby.  We have BIG plans for this concept, to use it also to track votes after our advocacy, as I suggested already.  We are focussing on the TPP in the first instance, but we can add any issue you can think of to the interface, which has a dropdown menu to enable this function, we can do state level issues ultimately, there really is no limit to the potential power of the people here.

JB:  Thanks so much to you and your team, PEN. This is a great people power tool and this is a perfect moment for us to flex our collective people power. It was a pleasure talking with you again. 

PEN: And thank you to you Joan, again for your most diligent activism.  We are so excited about this.  It's working so well just out of the box.

***

The People Lobby website

my previous interviews with PEN: 

*Use This Innovative Action Page Link and Stop the Trans Pacific Partnership 1/5/2014

*The Worst Trade Deal Ever, And What You Can Do To Stop It 12/11/2013

The PEN: Save the Bees Before We All Starve 8/10/2013



Authors Website: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

Authors Bio:

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of transparency and the ability to accurately check and authenticate the vote cast, these systems can alter election results and therefore are simply antithetical to democratic principles and functioning.



Since the pivotal 2004 Presidential election, Joan has come to see the connection between a broken election system, a dysfunctional, corporate media and a total lack of campaign finance reform. This has led her to enlarge the parameters of her writing to include interviews with whistle-blowers and articulate others who give a view quite different from that presented by the mainstream media. She also turns the spotlight on activists and ordinary folks who are striving to make a difference, to clean up and improve their corner of the world. By focusing on these intrepid individuals, she gives hope and inspiration to those who might otherwise be turned off and alienated. She also interviews people in the arts in all their variations - authors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, playwrights, and artists. Why? The bottom line: without art and inspiration, we lose one of the best parts of ourselves. And we're all in this together. If Joan can keep even one of her fellow citizens going another day, she considers her job well done.


When Joan hit one million page views, OEN Managing Editor, Meryl Ann Butler interviewed her, turning interviewer briefly into interviewee. Read the interview here.


While the news is often quite depressing, Joan nevertheless strives to maintain her mantra: "Grab life now in an exuberant embrace!"


Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at Huffington Post, RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.

Back