FLORIDA FOR PEACE CONFERENCE CALL
Thursday, November 15, 2007

Attendees:
Cactus Pat
Carol S.
Hillary (not Clinton)
Lydia V.

Lydia gave a report on the legislative call with UFPJ last week. Basically the plan is to continue the effort to get democrats in the House to sign the “showdown letter” - 90 members have signed. The goal is 117 (half of the dems in the house).

The “showdown letter” and those who have signed it can be found here [1]... (thank you Hillary for that). For a more detailed report on the UFPJ call please contact Lydia at codepinktally(at)yahoo.com.

The main purpose of this conference call was to decide what, if anything, Florida For Peace can do during the months of November (which is almost over) and December...

Carol has been sending FAXes to every single Florida representative’s office, every day - she sends the calendar (in the FFP Files area) with the updated number of soldiers who’ve died in Iraq. She will continue to do that.

We all agreed that besides FAXing, calling into the offices keeps us connected with them. We talked about setting up a phone tree for our next state wide effort - more on that in a minute.

We discussed the Progressive Caucus Letter and decided that the best way to get our 7 Florida congress people to sign the letter is to go to their offices, like we did with Nelson. This is a goal we can probably complete successfully before the end of December - most importantly BEFORE these folks go back to DC to vote in January.

We have 9 Florida reps - Seven have not signed the letter
Allen Boyd District #2
Corrine Brown District #3 HAS signed on
Kathy Castor District #11
Timothy Mahoney District #16
Kendrick Meek District #17
Robert Wexler District #19
Debbie Wasserman-Shultz District #20
Ron Klein District #22
Alcee Hastings District #23 HAS signed on

We talked about setting up a link on the FFP group where anyone could go to the link, find out who their representative is (address, phone, FAX etc) and sign up to coordinate that district. Or, sign up support the actions in the district (ie; phone calls during meetings, organizing the phone tree, faxing daily, getting postcards signed and mailed). Pat is going to put something together for us - all help and suggestions should go to Pat at cactuspat1(at)yahoo.com

Pat is also going to explain in a POST how we can start sending him the names of every single peace and social justice group in our areas into him. The idea is to have a huge master lists for outreach for these meeting actions. We want to invite every Florida group to join FFP and do this legislative work with us.

There was consensus on the following:

It’s a good idea to use the request to sign the Progressive Letter to get into offices and ask for meetings. And, to leave them a copy of the letter just in case they haven’t seen it.

Lydia has the time and desire to travel around the state and we think we can get support for office visits from peacemakers around the state. We will organize an outreach effort for support once we decide on the dates/times etc.

We are going to make a postcard that has all 7 reps who HAVE NOT SIGNED the letter and FOCUS ON _________________________(gotta come up with something here). Demands on the back will be:

1. Fund the Troops Home, NOW


2. Stop Funding Torture


3. Sign the Progressive Caucus Letter NOW


4. IMPEACH Bush / IMPEACH Cheney First!


5. Don’t Iraq Iran or Hands of Iran


6. ____________________________________

These questions will have the little “boxes” - left blank, to check, otherwise the cards will be mostly the same as the Focus On Nelson cards. We decided to use many colors if the print shop will do it at a discount.

When they sign the letter we can X thru their faces. Mainly we put to focus right on the dems.

These postcards can be signed from anywhere in the state - BUT, the more signatures from citizens in the district represented, the better. Contact Lydia and she will mail cards to you to get signed - you can mail them to the district office or we can deliver them.

We agreed NOT to put Corrine Brown or Alcee Hastings on the group postcard. Instead we want to do something special for them because they HAVE signed onto the letter. We will deliver PINK Badges of Courage. Other FFP groups should send in awards that we can deliver also, or just bring them with them to the meeting.

Lydia reported that she will be in DC at the CP house for the 1st two weeks in December.

We decided that Lydia should try to meet Hillary in South Florida on November 26 or 27. The goal is to visit offices in Ft. Lauderdale, Pembroke Pines, Palm Beach Gardens, Boca Raton and then across the state in Tampa. Hillary has agreed to send out the message to get activists in south Florida to go with Lydia to these offices. It will be most effective if we have constituents from each district in attendance. We’ll do the meetings no matter what. We will probably have to do 2 meetings each day :-(

We will reach out to FFP members to set up a “phone tree” for when we are actually in the offices. Calls can come in from any where in the state for this part of the action. We hope to find 10 people who will commit to calling each office during our visit. Since we probably aren’t going to see the Congressperson on the first visit, the meetings are quite casual and comfortable. We will get more prepared in advance for meetings with representatives.

Carol and Lydia and Pat and Mary intend to visit Allen Boyd’s office in Tallahassee early next week or right after Thanksgiving. Lydia is planning to drive to Jacksonville to visit Corrine Brown’s office and deliver PINK Badges of Courage to her office staff. No dates set on either visit but we do need a “phone tree” if anyone can take that on.

We also talked briefly about the GONZO Action in Gainesville on Monday night, the 19th and how we can support them (even if we can’t be there). And, Lydia reported on the November 28th Rise Up Campaign scheduled for St. Pete during the CNN Republican YouTube Debate. The organizing group has asked for donations and Lydia will post that address when she gets it - if you can’t go maybe you could send a few dollars to help out. Every little bit helps.

To close, we basically want to stick with the UFPJ/CODEPINK campaign to get this letter signed before congress reconvenes in January. It’s a short term goal for November and December. We agreed that we should make it very clear to these representatives that we are going to “focus” on their offices a whole lot in 2008.

With the Nov. ‘08 election right around the corner, this is a perfect time to put the pressure on these House members. Every House seat has to be won, again.

Thanks to all who attended the call. More info on meeting dates and times to follow.
Peace, Lydia

NOTE: Since last night Dave and Lydia have been talking about canceling her visit to DC and focusing on the reps in Florida thru December. This should make it a lot easier for everyone to get prepared and maybe get time off of work to attend meetings. It will give us more time for outreach. And, she can get her cataracts off!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I’m really too young for those :-D) We’ll decide for sure this weekend.