[LWVNM Action] Legislative Action Study Group

[Akkana Peck]

To people interested in the study group:

I forgot that this mailing list sometimes obscures the email address
of people replying. If you want to be on the mailing list, please
email me at akkana at shallowsky.com -- don't just reply to this
message, or if you do reply, change the To line to my address.

If you've replied already, no need to reply again -- I found email
addresses for everybody who's replied so far.

        ...Akkana

Akkana Peck writes:
> 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