My Life As a Speed Bump
by David Underhill
For Frequent Flyers in the Friendly Skies it might seem normal to receive a request to appear two days later in DC as a lobbyist on Capitol Hill. And for any of the 35,000 professional lobbyists infesting Washington this might seem normal. It doesn't for the rest of us who don't even know what proper attire might be on such an assignment and who probably wouldn't have that wardrobe anyway.
Nor would we have the information for this role. Our handlers would need to provide that, perhaps in the form of those mysterious "talking points" that appear to be the weapon of choice in DC, like sword points for movie swashbucklers.
And someone would also have to provide the financial lubrication to keep the machinery of this venture moving. I never learned the full story, nor tried to. I know that national Sierra was involved for me; other orgs for other travelers.
A subway from the airport brought me to an assigned hotel on an early October midnight. The desk clerk sent me to a room where I hoped the sleeping lump in the other bed would prove to be someone expecting me. He was, to the relief of us both, come morning.
The little flock gathered at a coffee shop on Capitol Hill. We were a hasty collection of folks from the Katrina/Rita landing strip stretching from southwest Alabama to southeast Texas. We had a squad of shepherds from the enviro orgs that know the contours of The Hill.
They gave us a cram course in legislation racing through congress to undo much of the enviro law that had accumulated over decades. In the name of reconstruction and jobs in the wrecked regions of the gulf coast, these bills would empower a few federal officials to weaken or waive national and local protections. Not only for the environment but also for health, safety, transportation, wages, accounting, contracts… Would even family values be secure?
And not only in the battered hurricane tract. These few feds could scrap the rules for any project anywhere that had some connection with reviving the ruins. Rocketing a robot to Uranus would create jobs and stimulate the economy, wouldn't it? As would drilling for oil in the Arctic.
Would the limits of legal behavior be stretched so far that scarcely any behavior remained out of bounds? So it appeared from the reviews we received of some of this legislation.
It sprang from the interest groups and think tanks long dedicated to the idea that government is the problem not the solution. They had, within weeks of the hurricanes, crafted the legislation that would enact this vision and recruited sponsors to hustle it through congress.
The task of our amateur flock was to fling ourselves in the path of this contraption. We probably wouldn't stop it. Maybe we could nudge it off course. Slow it down. Allow time for amendments and moderations to take a toll. We were speed bumps.
Armed with fat info packs that were more like blunt instruments than stilettos, we held a press conference. Then we scattered through the halls of congress, where I soon learned: that the senator or representative you hoped to corner was almost always elsewhere or occupied, that the staffers you talked to instead were harried, and that your wads of data could be honed into the talking points they preferred. But doing this required concentrated work. Plus some casual chatter and blarney.
After two days of this I had to lean into windy rain to walk past the imposing new Capitol Hill headquarters of the Heritage Foundation, which I knew had fostered some of the bills that left tread marks on me. A few blocks beyond, I arrived dripping at Sierra's DC outpost in a modest suite of an ordinary building.
The vote was underway in the House of Representatives on one of these bills. And the small staff was happy, almost celebratory, because the tally was running against them narrowly--rather than hugely.
This struck neophyte me as symptomatic of battered spouses, delighted at being beaten less severely than usual. But to them, who will be there next month and next year, it evidently was a crack in the clouds and a glimmer of sunlight ahead.
 Back to Notes from the Gulf main page.
Have your own story from the Gulf Coast? Contact us.
Up to Top
HOME |
Email Signup |
About Us |
Contact Us |
Terms of Use |
© 2008 Sierra Club
|
