At 9 a. M. We appreciate you coming out, and we will endeavor to do our part on this panel to make it worth your while. Panel, is tothis provide some best practices, for lobbying congress. We have three amazing organizers leadwho will organizations that focus on effectively lobbying congress, and we have two champions in the caucusses progressive who have committed their careers to organizing and are the best people possible to tell you what works, what does not, and how we basically take this moment of Incredible Energy and turn it into an, longterm progressive organizing. To create tangible wins and victories on capitol hill. So, Everybody Knows how this works, i will do a brief introduction, and each of our panelists will provide a brief introduction or introductory comments about how they see this moment of trouble organizing, and the ways that we can effectively lobby the hill. I will start by saying, we are in an incredible moment of energy and activism. Americans of all political stripes are speaking out in ways that are fighting the agenda. Said that democrats are twice as likely as republicans as a whole to engage in activism. Be in mores to likely to have shared opinions, in social media, protesting or attending local meetings to rid are fired up, engaged and we just have to figure out how we can turn that energy into effective lobbying. First, i will start with ezra levine. He is the cofounder of municipal project, former congressional hill staffer who lived through [applause] [laughter] [indiscernible] he and a group of former 30 congressional staffers lived through that 2009 tea party e and and tea party wav may have taken lessons from that has turned it around. Felt, thank you for joining us. Answer thank you. Can you all hear me . Ok, thank you. I would like to go into the background of what indivisible is. We started as a group, seven months ago, we were going through the stages of grief. After the election, like a lot of progressives were. Said, as a member of congressional staff, i worked for congressman, and she worked for congressman tom perry eloped. From virginia. We were trying to figure out what we could do. There was already a ton of energy coming out in november, it was immediate and we saw that. We were trying to figure out, what should we do . And talking to some of our friends who were kind of newly involved in this activist. We had one of them who had a bar, an old College Friend and she was part of this new group army, aumbledores private Facebook Group dedicated to resistance. And we were hearing from other folks, what do we need to do, do we sign petitions, do we make phone calls . How do we connect and resist the Trump Administration . And we thought, we have seen what works. The tea party, taking away their racism and their violence, they were very smart. Local defense of congressional attitudes work. It was not rocket science, going to town halls and public events, making calls that works. , it changed what was possible at the national level. It is not to say that they won, we got the Affordable Care act, we got the stimulus and we got that frank. There were victories. We put out the indivisible guide, as a google doc, to explain exactly how that works. What role of constituent power in elections and in the legislative process. That is what it is about. Maybe six months later that someone would come back to us and say hey, we used your guided the town hall and we have some questions. , would have been psyched that was our measure of success but within a couple of hours, after i tweeted it out to might dozens of followers, sitting at the Kitchen Table after work one day, and within a couple of it hours, was crashing. There were too many people trying to get to the document. We put our thoughts on saving american democracy, its not normally what would happen. It is not that people put it on a google doc on mine, that is not what happened. So, the response was overwhelming, it was people saying, i was in despair and didnt know what to do. And now were indivisible roanoke or auburn. I think we have auburn in the crowd. And so, we faced this really unexpected choice in january, at the bottom of the first page of the google document, we say that we are not official advocates our bosses dont really know , about this. We are not starting an organization, thats the last thing progressives need is another nonprofit. [laughter] then in january, we started an organization. [laughter] and we did it, explicitly as a group. We had policy and elegant oral goals. We support candidates electoral goals. We support candidates. That is not why we exist. We exist to support this communitylevel foundational progressive infrastructure and from that flows everything else. Now we have shockingly about 6,000 groups that registered and thats every single Congressional District in the country. How many . Ezra 6000, so this is not just east coast or west coast, this is in the red states, in rural places. An average of 13 and every window Congressional District. Some of our strongest groups, the rn they are in east tennessee, indivisible ozark, indivisible oklahoma in the crowd. What theyre doing is actual organizing work. Theyre building up leadership and power at the local level and effecting change. Ill stop there, and either the individual organization has developed. Mike awesome. Thank you so much. Next we will hear from jan schakowsky, congresswoman representing illinois ninth Congressional District. [applause] she serves in the House Democratic leadership as a chief deputy whip, and a member of the steering and Steering Committee policy in the house and most importantly a vice chair of the congressional progressive caucus and somebody who has been a champion and one of the leaders who pushed back in one of the situations similar to what were facing today when president bush tried to privatize social security. That was a moment of insight insideoutside organizing that she led on. We would love to hear your insights. Representative schakowsky thank you. Im happy to be here. Ezra, i want to thank you, all of our panelists. . I guess i have to be in the category with mark as a member of congress, but both of us are comfortable in the organizer category. I have been an organizer for over 40 years. I want to acknowledge my husband bob kramer who was here, and who is also a great organizer. [applause] and i have never in my lifetime seen anything as big as this right now. This is, you know, i lived through the civil Rights Movement, the vietnam protests all big, all effective, but nothing like this. There are more people engaged than i have ever seen and the other great thing, and i think it was demonstrated by the womens march the day marches, the day after the election, that there was this sense of unity despite, it was under the banner of women but there were all of these organizations and signs, of course, reproductive rights, economic justice, immigration, lbgt, war, peace, science, guns, environment truth, health , care, that everybody felt as if it were one thing. So one of the points i want to make is that unity is so incredibly important. Yes, you can follow your passion and get involved with the aclu or an Environmental Organization or something more general like indivisible that may focus in your community on some particular thing. But understand that we need to maintain this unity and intensity. Intensity really matters, i was the target of one of those town Hall Meetings by the tea party in 2009, and i will never forget it. Those were happening all over the country, we are bigger than the tea party was and is right now. So, feel your power and note your power. Showing up really matters. You heard from ezra, the idea of the phone calls. The idea of the town Hall Meetings. The idea of going to the members offices that wont have town Hall Meetings. The idea of inviting members like me to go to a republican district and do a town hall meeting in that district. Some of us are actually willing to do that, but we need to be invited and also, we need a sense of victory that builds confidence. Victories beget victories. Everyone in the Progressive Movement should feel the power of winning that fight on health care. [applause] what a tremendous, tremendous victory that was and everything was in play. We mention the phone calls and the town Hall Meetings, going to offices, but doing president s and days of action, if youre with an organization, you have tv spots run in the district and massive social media which all of you can do with your 12 friends, i love that. [laughter] and now millions of people. That when we fight, we win. The people from move on know that every rally that i go to, i like to say at the end, when we fight we win. You try it. When we fight all we win. Christ and the other thing that have been saying lately, when i say how do you feel today, you say powerful. How do you feel today . All powerful. Representative schakowsky we want that kind of feeling and the health care fight showed that happen. That doesnt mean you can relax now, they will try to come back. I do want to give a special shout out as an example of what can be done to the Disability Rights Movement and adapt in this fight. The images of people being pulled out of their wheelchairs is not unlike the images during the civil Rights Movement of fire hoses being turned on children in the childrens marches or john lewis getting his head cracked. Its those kind of visuals are very, very important to our movement. One other thing, elections, we have to be able to transform all of this energy also into elections. Its not too soon to do voter registration. The one thing i want to o is candidates. Think of yourself as candidates, all these people who started groups, i go to some of these women, and they are mostly women either way, and man, and they, why arent you running for local office . Some are. Representative schakowsky some are, i know, but we need to convince more and more people to think of themselves as candidates to be talent scouts, yourself to decide if you can pull an organization together, and Indivisible Organization or whatever, that you should be members of planned parenthood, all those different organizations. We need those candidates at the local level, not just as a pipeline, but because a lot is happening at the local level. Raising minimum wage and what they insurance in the local level covers. So, we need to have those candidates coming and stepping forward, even as we register voters and they get ready for 2018. Ill stop there. [applause] mike fantastic. Thank you congresswoman. Next we have yasmine taeb for human rights at friends organization. An organization that is an amazing ally of the progressive caucus. I have worked with her for many years on very tough issues, lobbying congress on the list tourism, human rights must torture, and how we have a progressive important policy. The organization has been a leader since trump called out his infamous ms. Lindon infamous muslim ban in terms of creating an important grass roots organizing moment and fostering the program and thank you for joining us. Yasmine thank you so much. Thank you to my copanelists and all of you for joining us today. I wont take too much of your time for my opening remarks. I want to make sure we leave plenty of time for discussion. I want to take a couple minutes to talk a little bit about the work that our partners have been doing in terms of pushing back against this administrations heinous, unconstitutional and unconscionable policies when in terms of when were talking about the muslim and refugee ban and a lot of the administrations policies in terms of targeting communities of color and immigrant communities. Hopefully most of what i am going to talk about in the next few minutes in terms of best , practices and what has been working these last eight months or so during this administration is you know, things that you , already know, but i want to highlight a couple of points and let you know what has been working for us in terms of the se fight that have come across our path, and what weve been doing in terms of working with our partners and ensuring that we continue to push back against these policies. So as mike mentioned, one of the main issues that i work on at the Community Committee on legislation, is pushing back against the administrations muslim and refugee ban. This executive order was first issued on a friday around 5 p. M. , on generate obviously, a 27th, lot of the things that this administration does, you know, does so in terms of hoping that folks wont notice or folks wont care and as many of you remember, that friday when that executive order was issued, immediately the following morning airports across the , country were flooded with thousands and thousands of americans showing up with signs saying refugees are welcome here. We love our muslim neighbors, amazing, amazing, incredible response that i personally have never seen, for me as iranian american muslim, someone who immigrated into this country. When i was in Elementary School i was welcomed here. My family has been welcomed here. Seeing that, to counter the policies that this administration is pushing which i see as completely counter to the values our country stands for and to me is incredibly heartening to see thousands of folks, in really the dead of winter there were thousands of folks outside the airport in new york in 30 degree weather. Mom, i spoke with my mother that weekend and she yasmin i do not know what to say. I am so amazed that the Many Americans care about muslims, and care about families. For her to think our neighbors wouldnt stand up for our when our committee came under attack, part of me felt happy to hear that, really happy to hear that, but part of me also felt sad that she was surprised to see that. I was like, well, thats what i expect. Thats who we are as americans. So, initially, you know, when we saw the grassroots mobilization around the issue, a lot of it was really due to the work that all of you have been doing collectively. I mean one of the best signs i , have seen come out of the election of trump, aside from this kind of movement that we have seen, this Immense Energy and interest in getting involved, is really the recognition that we as communities cannot work in silos, we need to be supporting one another. We need to make the concerted effort, if were not already working in coalition, to build coalitions, alliances with groups that we have not previously worked with on these issues. So on the muslim and refugee ban, for instance, the rallies that we organized in washington dc the protests in january, march, and june, we had previously never worked with lgbtq organization hrc came out with a massive force, they sent out volunteers and their members him out with signs. They blasted out protests, messages to their members. Sierra club, so many, so Many Organizations that previously have not really been working on issues related to either islamophobia or refugee issues were there with us, were there with us protesting. Were there with us rallying. The first protest was held at the white house in january when nearly 10,000 people showed up. That to me is so incredibly critical when we talk about how to effectively organize and turn this energy, this movement into success not just in terms of victories on capitol hill, but again in showing this administration that we will continue to show up, we will continue to stand up for communities any time he tries to single out any of our Community Members. Whether it is the lbgt community, whether its women, whether its muslims, and you name it. So, i think that one of the things i wanted to, again, emphasize is the need to always show up, as the congresswoman mentioned to always show up. , you know, this executive order has come out in multiple iterations, and each time it comes out we have been on the streets protesting. We have had a protest every time the executive order came out and the Supreme Court decision that came out in when a partial june 26, portion of the ban was in effect, we were there, we want trump to know that he can try as many times as he wants in trying to propose or advance his discriminatory policies, that we will continue to show up and let him know that our country is a welcoming country. That we will welcome refugees, we do not turn anyone away. Especially those that are being persecuted or fleeing because of conflicts. I think that what i have seen in terms of the work of your doing around this issue, i think that in terms of, again, Coalition Building and working with unlikely allies, some of the other organizations that we have been working with, in terms of libertarian groups or even members on capitol hill. As mike mentioned, we worked very closely and aggressive will congressional progressive caucus, they are amazing and they have always been our allies, always there supporting us at rallies, on the floor, making public statements, holding press conferences. Introducing bills to rescind these executive orders, you name it. But what weve been recognizing is because were dealing with a republican administration, republicancontrolled congress. , we need to build alliances with modern moderate republicans. It is a reality. It is something that we have to do. In makinginterested any sort of headway or progress in our issues. Thats something that weve been working on this year, reaching reaching out to those republicans that either did not vote for trunk, or did not andort a repeal of the aca, there are more than three dozen republicans in the house and senate that we have been meeting with open to have these conversations about, again, knowing what these policies that this administration is pushing or has advanced. What they really mean, how they impact our communities and how they impact their constituents. Once we actually sit down and meet with them and have faith leaders and reach out and bring constituents from their districts, evangelicals, we have libertarians reaching out to them, all of these are creativ