Well, in life, things fall through the cracks. Now is one of those times. Over two months ago, I wrote a blog post, but then never actually posted it! This week I was contacted by the Sierra Club to see if they could include us in THEIR blog. So here is a link to the newly published Sierra Club Blog, as well as my original post about the experience mentioned in their blog.
~Sara
So, our blog has been quiet for a bit because we’ve had some big changes this summer – our family relocated across the country to Virginia and we’ve stayed pretty busy with all the things related to this move.
Moving and trying to do that in an environmentally conscious way has been interesting, and fodder for a future blog post.
But today I wanted to let you know about our recent visit to our new Congressman. I was inspired after calling in to a Zoom training with the Sierra Club about how to effectively lobby your congressperson. They were coordinating an effort to have people visit with their representative during the August recess to promote the Green New Deal.
I have never done something like this before and honestly it felt far outside my comfort zone, but one of my goals with our family’s move was to get more involved politically. As we’ve always said, our personal lifestyle changes are important and give us motivation and credibility in our effort to make a difference, but for significant change to happen, we need political and judicial changes.
So I took a leap, and decided to visit my representative’s office. The Sierra Club has some great resources that I used including handouts I could leave in their office. If you go visit your Rep, you can do or ask them about anything that is important to you, but we followed the Sierra Club suggestion and asked them to support legislation to have our country use 100% renewable energy by 2050 and to extend the tax credit for electric vehicles.
My Rep is a newly elected Republican who has voted over 90% of the time with what Trump wants, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was also going as a drop-in, not with a scheduled appointment, so knew I was likely to talk to a staff person, not the Congressman. My goal was to have a polite conversation, leave my info, and have a record of my concerns so he knows people in his district care about environmental issues.
Most importantly, I brought Ainsley so she could have this experience too, and start learning how laws are made. If you ask her about what we did, she would tell you, “We want the President to make rules that help the planet.”
We brought our handouts and a “basket” decorated by Ainsley, which we filled with peaches we picked from a local orchard and flowers from our backyard. The staff person we met with was very welcoming and listened politely to our ask. He was very non-committal about the Congressman’s support, but I also learned that he opposes the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. While I doubt he will support any Green New Deal legislation, I felt like I started building a relationship with his office, there might be issues we can both support, and I’m much more likely to go back again to keep lobbying them to “make rules that help the planet.”
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