Day 5 At Fantasia Fair

The morning started off with my workshop “Effective Lobbying*” and I had only 3 people show up for the presentation, but those three people were there to learn. So we had a very good discussion and covered a lot of material.

At lunch I once again when to Tin Pan Alley and once again we all sat out on the deck. I have to this I think we had the best weather ever!

After lunch I went to the Keynote Address it was a panel discussion about the "State of the (Trans*) Union", on the panel was Rep. Sarah Peake (Representative from the 4th Barnstable District on Cape Cod (it includes Provincetown)), Kimberly Strovink, J.D. (Assistant Attorney General at Massachusetts Attorney General's Office), M. Dru Levasseur (Transgender Rights Project Director for Lambda Legal), Mara Keisling (Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality).

The panel was very informative; one of the things that I learned was that the ballot initiative to repeal the public accommodation law that protects needs to get voted on by 30 percent of the people voting in order for the ballot to count. I asked a question at the end about the so called “religious freedom” law that U.S. Attorney General is pushing and can it override the state non-discrimination law and the said under the current federal law that it cannot be used as a weapon to discriminate. I also commented on what was said about Planned Parenthood treating trans patients, that Connecticut Planned Parenthood have treated patients for over ten years and they also sat on the Anti-Discrimination Coalition and then later the ctEQUALITY meetings for all the trans legislation and has lobbied for the bills since I first started attending the meeting back in 2006.

After the Keynote Address I went back to my room and read. I went out to supper with a friend and had pizza at George’s, she went to the Follies and I wrote this and then read for a while out on the deck listening to the waves roll on shore.

This morning I’m meeting with a real estate agent to look at seasonal cottages that I might want to buy next spring.

*My outline for the workshop...

Effective Lobby Workshop Outline
I. The inside/outside strategy
a. Both the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Saul Alinsky knew the value of the inside/outside strategies.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said,

”The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”

In an article in the Huffington Post Peter Dreier wrote,

The insiders, elected officials and lobbyists, see their job as pushing through changes in law that can alter the living conditions, incomes, and access to opportunity and environment of our citizens. Legislating involves the “art of compromise” that requires the skills of brokering deals, negotiating, and forging consensus.
Outsiders — community activists, street protestors and radicals — need different skills. They often view compromise as “selling out” by politicians tied to corporate and elite interests. Activists believe that the influence of campaign contributions, and the trade-offs required by legislative give-and-take, make most elected officials undependable allies.

Both the inside and outside are equal parts in the strategies to bring about change, they are Yin and Yang and my workshop at FF will be on the inside game, lobbying your legislators.

An example of an inside outside strategy?
Trump & Bannon

II. All politics are local
Massachusetts 2018 Ballot initiative
School boards --- GI/GE policies
Public safety officials --- training

III. Motive
Financial
Personal
Emotional

IV. All lobbying is basically the same
You have a fixed amount of time to state your case
It doesn’t matter if you are talking to an elected official in their office, home, or walking down the hallway with them or testifying in a public hearing.

V. Discussion of flyer on Effective Lobbying

VI. Discussion of my testimony

VII. Get in touch with your state trans organization
Talking points --- things to say and things not to say
Letters to the editor
Talking to your elected representatives --- feedback to the state trans organization
Avoid talking to the media