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Cypherpunks Lobbying?
On Thu, 13 Jul 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:
>
> I'd hardly call my view "throwing in the towel." What I said clearly enough
> was that the Washingtonians can throw out repressive legislation much
> faster than we can--and I speak in terms of "we" as being the EFF, EPIC,
> NRA, ACLU, etc., and _not_ the Cyherpunks, who have no lobbying activities
> to speak of.
I'm glad you brought this up, Tim, because Pat Farrell, Carl Ellison, and
I have been discussing the possiblility of doing just that over the past
week or so. The three of us, in addition to many others (we like to call
ourselves "The Mid-Atlantic Cypherpunks") are very near DC and thought we
might take advantage of this on behalf of others who don't have the luxury
of living near their legislators.
Our idea (and it was originally limited to lobbying against the CDA, but
we can expand it now to lobby against that and S.974) was to have Cypherpunks
send letters (yes, authentic _snail mail_) to a Cypherpunk willing to go
deliver it in person, (namely me) and talk to whoever is there, be it the
congressperson or one of his/her aides. The strategy of this action would
be to say,"hello, we represent <insert your organization here> and we
oppose <insert appropriate legislation title here> and we feel this way
because <insert very reasonable and diplomatic explanations in easy,
mono-syllabic words so that the congresscritter can understand here> and
here is a letter from one of your constituents who feels the same way we
do." A simple lobby.
I thought this might be effective because it seems that a lot of
representatives are difficult to get in touch with, since not all of them
have e-mail addresses. I think there is a certain advantage in this kind
of action from an educational standpoint, considering that the House
doesn't seem to have a strong backer for this bill like the Senate did,
and the many Congresscritters who know nothing about the net only need
someone to explain the consequences of such a bill to them. Furthermore,
to those ignorant of the net and its ways, a printed out list of names and
e-mail addresses collected through the web is completely foreign and
perhaps intimidating to them, and therefore not all that helpful to us,
IMHO. Hand-signed letters (or hand-written, if your printing is more
legible than mine) in good, old-fashioned envelopes is just what critters
of this sort need to see.
If any US citizens here would like me (and hopefully some older, wiser
cypherpunks willing to join me on this trip) to deliver a letter to their
congressperson please send a letter to this address:
The Hon. Whoever
c/o Kathleen M. Ellis
TSU box 898
Towson State University
8000 York Road
Towson, MD 21204
On the envelope you must include:
The name of the congressperson (if I have to open the letter to be able
to tell who it is meant for it'll lose some of its
authenticity)
My full address (yes, all five lines of it, or i'll never get it)
If you can get it, the office location of representative
(building name and room number) printed on the
back or something, if you can't find it don't
worry, I'll find it, but if you can find it I'd
appreciate it. You can get it at the URL below.
A return address
A postmark from your district
The letter must have:
The specific bill you are against; its number, title, and sponsors
(the CDA is H.R.1004/S.652 sponsored by
Senator James Exon, from Nebraska)
Possible alternatives (my suggestion is H.R. 1978, sponsored by
Cox and Wyden)
A polite introuduction, a concise body, and a gracious
conclusion :).
Your address and signature.
If you need more information for your letter, good URLs on the subject are:
http://www.cdt.org/cdw.html
http://www.cdt.org/petition.html
http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Issues/censorship/Exon_bill/
http://uvacs.cs.virginia.edu/~hwh6k/public/S314_stuff.html
http://www.phantom.com/~slowdog
http://www.panix.com/vtw/exon/
If you don't know who your representative is, try to find her/him through
http://www.house.gov
and look for a familiar looking name from your state. Unfortunately
there's no "point-and-click" US map to refer to to find out which
district is yours, but you should be able to find out fairly easily by
looking for familiar names. If you really get stuck, try your local
League of Women Voters.
The main thing is, I need these letters soon. In order to have a shot at
getting to talk to anyone, I must make appointments with the offices of
the respective representatives. The house is expected to vote on this
topic any day now; the clock's a-ticking. I ask that all letters be sent
so that I can recieve them by July 23rd. I aim to raid congress on
Tuesday, July 25th. This date could be changed, depending on the definite
responses I get from people willing to help.
I have lobbied before, and I'm up to the task, but it would be nice to
have some other politically-oriented cypherpunks along for, at the very
least, moral support. Anybody interested, Please Please Please send me
some e-mail. Carl or Pat might go, and if we get enough people to help we
can split the workload among teams.
If anyone has comments/questions/suggestions, don't hesitate. I'd
appreciate whatever isn't necesary to go up on the list to be sent to me
privately, so's I don't get into trouble for "inciting spam".
-=Kathleen M. Ellis=-
[email protected] http://zeus.towson.edu/~kelli/
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Diverse Sexual Orientation Coll.Towson State University [email protected]
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