[LWVNM Action] Legislative Action Study Group

[Akkana Peck]

At the Action Committee meeting today, I mentioned an idea I'd had:
an Action study group.

The problem: legislative advocacy is hard. For instance,
  - Finding anything on the Legislative website
  - Reading and understanding a bill
  - Understanding our League positions and how they allow us to
    advocate for or against bills
  - Speaking in public for or against a bill

The Advocacy Workshop (tomorrow!) covers the last item, but how
do you learn the other three?

I proposed a study group that meets (at least) once a week where
we mentor each other and learn together. Everybody's welcome, from
complete beginners to experts. 

We could do things like parcel out new bills to study group members:
choose a bill on a topic you're interested in, read it, try to
understand it, and report back telling us what it's about and
whether we should support or oppose it. If a bill was too convoluted
to be understood, that's useful information too (sometimes that
means somebody is trying to hide what a bill is really about, or
maybe it just needs several people reading it and trying to figure
it out). We can report our findings at the regular Friday Action
Committee meetings.

If you want to be involved, let me know. I have a few people signed
up already. I'll collect any more names I get over the weekend,
and then we can figure out when to meet and how we want to run this.

        ...Akkana