We drove to Sacramento to attend a hearing on AB 583.
AB 583 is the California Clean Money Bill. AB 583 will provide public financing for all statewide offices, thus removing the tremendous power that big-money lobbyists have over our state government. Those of you who know the history of California state government-- from Willy Brown's machine to Gray Davis's kowtowing to the energy industry and prison unions, to our current Governor taking in huge amounts of campaign cash from corporations and industry lobbying associations-- know that we desperately need
Clean Money here. Clean Money has been in place for several election cycles in Arizona and Maine, and was just passed in Connecticut too.
THE BACKGROUND
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The bill was introduced by Loni Hancock in the Assembly last year. It is different from a similar the initiative for the November ballot-- placed there by the Nurse's Union-- but it is complementary; the Clean Money people have been working closely with the Nurses on that ballot measure. We have the same goals: get corporate lobbyist money out of politics. The Nurse's initiative goes farther than AB583 in some respects, but AB 583 may be arguably tighter with fewer loopholes due to its having been refined by the legislative drafting process. Whichever one passes, the people win. The nurses are doing an excellent job with theirs. Our mission-- and we've chosen to accept it-- is to try to pass the legislative version, AB 583.
Even though Clean Money is a non-partisan issue and its organisation is non-partisan, the bill passed the Assembly exactly along party lines: D's voted yes, R's voted no. Let's face it: in this era of the "Repug Culture of Corruption", the issue of Clean Money is an obvious winner for Democrats. The state Democratic Party has endorsed the measure and added it to their platform. The bill is currently stuck in the Senate Elections committee. We have one champion there: Democratic Senator Debra Bowen, who is fantastic, and is also the chair of the committee. The two Republicans on the committee (Battin and Poochigian) are almost certainly NO votes. And, out of the two other Democrats on the committee, Kevin Murray is uncertain and Gloria Romero is outwardly hostile towards it. The bill has had one hearing already in the Elections Committee, during which Romero delivered an astounding rant against the bill, then walked out of the room, along with Murray.
Clean Money volunteers-- especially his constituents in the East Bay-- had been writing letters and FAXing Senate President pro Tempore Don Perata for a while. We weren't sure where Perata stood on this. He's stated his support for the bill, but we weren't sure how sincere or how dedicated this support actually was. The East Bay group had been trying for 6 months to get a meeting with Perata-- with no success. The test of his support was going to be how well he did at rallying Senators Murray and Romero behind it-- and we weren't very certain at all how well that'd go. Oh well, at least we'd get an "up or down" vote on it, and get a chance to get some of our points across in testimony.
VOTE? WHAT VOTE? OH, THAT VOTE? NOT TODAY, SORRY
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Today was supposed to be the vote on the bill. I carpooled (in a Prius, my first ride in one, very cool experience!) to Sacramento with a half-dozen Clean Money supporters from San Francisco. We met up with enough Clean Money supporters from all over California to pack the hearing room. We'd heard that some of the Senators were concerned about the bill being a problem for minorities, so we had arranged for several African American and Latino groups to give testimony about Clean Money; the bill explicitly levels the playing field for minority candidates who don't have access to big money campaign cash donors, so they're excited about it.
We waited. The hearing was supposed to start at 9:30AM. At around 10:15, finally, Senator Bowen entered the room, and announced that AB 583 had been removed from the agenda for this morning. WHAT??!
An angry roomfull of Clean Money supporters-- some who'd travelled 500 miles to be there-- exited into the hallway. We had been told that Romero had completely left Sacramento and went off to a Board of Regents meeting in San Francisco instead. We were furious because we wanted her to see us there, supporting this bill, and to hear our arguments in support of it ("...the right to petition for redress of grievances..."). Why didn't Perata insist that Romero show up to work this morning? Why was the vote put off? Couldn't Perata temporarily appoint someone else to take Romero's place for this committee hearing? Would it be killed for this year by not getting a vote until after the state budget was decided? Was there any hope of getting it on the ballot in November?
DO LOBBYISTS HAVE SIT-INS? THESE ONES DO!
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The choice was to give up or fight back. To my great delight, we chose fighting back. The Clean Money Legislative Analyst Sara Nichols came up with a plan: we go into Perata's office, demand answers, and we stay there until we get them. Instead of slinking away with our tails between our legs, and feeling like the system has ground us down, we stand and fight. What a great feeling! Nothing like a little impromptu direct action!
Perata has a huge, spacious, sumptuous office, right on the other side of the rotunda from the meeting room we'd just exited. So all of us-- I'd say 50-75 people-- filed into Perata's office. We walk over and absolutely pack his lobby. His receptionist looked at us like we were pond scum. Heh. Too bad, lady, here we come, and we ain't leavin'.
We sat in chairs, we sat on the floor, we sat on coffee tables and end-tables. The receptionist gave us the usual B.S.: he's in a meeting, his legislative consultant on this issue isn't here right now, everyone is busy, please go away, blah blah. We were having none of it. "Can I sit on this table," I ask one of our Clean Money coordinators? "Sure, it's your table, you paid for it!". Huh? Oh, OK, good point. I sit on the table. And wait.
Receptionist informs us that that she's arranged for a meeting room across the building, and we need to follow an officer there and wait, and one of Perata's aides will be there shortly to meet with us. We look around at each other. We do not see any gullible idiots. We do see a lot of angry people, who now also look a bit insulted too. Nobody moves. "No thanks, we'll stay here until the Senator meets with us". And we do.
But now, cellphones come out. Our people start calling reporters, every reporter they know, trying to get someone down here to cover this. Our coordinators try to get Loni Hancock to come down. Receptionist calls security. Security arrives: "You can't sit here, it's a fire hazard". "No problem," says one of the coordinators, "we'll stand instead!" So we stand up. Some of us have cameras and have pulled them out, and pictures start getting snapped. Security goes away. CHP officer comes back, makes his way silently through the crowd, and heads into the back room. We are all inside the lobby; more officers start milling around outside it. "Umm," I ask one of the coordinators, "do we have any local people to come bail us out? I didn't plan for getting arrested today." It seems that we do. One of the young workers in Perata's office climbs over us, to get to his office, and says to me, "Can you please leave? We're trying to get some work done!" Uh-huh. Well, so are we. Which is why we stay put.
It felt like a long time, but maybe 15-20 minutes have gone by. Finally the big carved-oak double doors to the back room open, and out comes Senator Perata, flanked by several very stern-looking White Men in Identical Tan Suits, and one very pissed-off-looking female aide in the back. And of course the CHP officer, off to the side.
If I can get ahold of the photographs, I'll post them here. It was quite a scene. Perata doesn't look anything like the kind of guy that'd be representing areas as racially, ethnically, and ideologically diverse as Oakland and Berkeley; he looks more like a suburban Chief of Police: white, grey-haired, portly. Perata is on one side of our group, across a low barrier. On the other side of us, Clean Money Executive Director Susan Lerner, VP Trent Lange, Legislative Analyst Sara Nichols, East Bay coordinator, etc. Perata looks completely in control of the situation, relaxed, patriarchal, graciously indulgent, joking around, making excuses, and ingratiating. Except he's definitely turning red about halfway through this "meeting".
He conducts a quick "Q&A" session. Perata claims he didn't decide to put off the vote; Bowen did. Claims he couldn't "make" Romero show up to work this morning and attend this hearing; all he can do is "discipline" her if needed. Claims he supports the bill-- "and in fact I wish we could ban all T.V. advertising, there should be Surgeon General's warnings on political ads". Hah hah, very funny, just try and get that past the Supreme Court. Claims he personally improved the bill, which was "the worst-drafted bill I've ever seen". Claims he's worried about this bill "watering down" the nurses' initiative, and doesn't want to be accused of placing a "poison pill" on the ballot to "dilute" what the nurses are doing. Claims the Senate rules do not allow him to "temporarily" replace committee members as is done in the Assembly. Claims that even with the Elections Committee vote delayed 3 weeks, the bill can still make it through the legislative session in time to be considered in the budget and to make its way to the ballot in November (which would mean passing Elections, then to Appropriations and pass that, then a full Senate vote, onto the Governor's desk, and then back again to override his very likely veto--- uh, sure, good luck). Claims he'd love to meet with us-- even though his constituents have been trying to do exactly that. Claims he'll sit down and meet with Lerner and Hancock-- after the Election Committee vote, even though they've been trying to meet with him, and need him to talk with us before the vote. Nobody decides to ask him why he doesn't then stiffen up AB 583 so that it is not "watered down" compared to the nurse's initiative-- or include an explode clause in AB583 to make it defer to the nurse's initiative in case it passes. We don't ask because we get a sense that we know: Perata does not want this bill.
But as we are ready to leave, after Perata takes his last question, his female aide in the back explodes with outraged indignation: "I want to remind you that without Senator Perata's leadership this bill would never have even appeared in committee, you have to thank him for it, blah blah blah" Wow. What was that about? Well, we politely thank him, for meeting with us anyway, but I don't think many of us bought the assertion that he's some kind of champion of this bill, or of Clean Money in general.
SHUFFLE OFF TO ROMERO'S OFFICE
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So now what? We go to Romero's office. Same group packs the office. When we get there, we find out that Romero is actually on her way back to the capitol! Did Perata force her back? No, her office claims that she was due back anyway. Hmm, perhaps we should try the same thing and force her to meet with us. We stay a while. One of her aides asks us "We're trying to work, can you please be quiet or leave?" We decide to be quiet. Leaving is not on our agenda.
AND OFF AGAIN TO BOWEN'S OFFICE
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Right about the time that Romero is due back from San Francisco, we hear that the Elections Committee has finished their meeting. An aide from Senator Bowen's office shows up outside the door to Romero's office, and starts talking with us. We file out of Romero's office to have a brief hallway conversation. The aide says that Bowen would like to meet with us, in her office. So we all march down again to Senator Bowen's office. We mill around for a while, waiting for the last of our now-getting-tired stragglers to arrive. And then, bringing up the rear, walking right into the midst of our group, is none other than Senator Bowen! She tries to talk with us but the hallway has too much echo and is too noisy. So her office arranges a meeting room. After some arrangements, we all shuffle down to a hearing room.
FINALLY, A KIND OF "HEARING"
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And at last we are back where we started: packing a hearing room. Only this time there is no hearing. There is only Senator Bowen, her Chief of Staff, our Clean Money leadership, and us.
I found Bowen to be as radically different from Perata as anyone could imagine. She seemed informal, "one of us", without any airs of authority or superiority. She could easily have fit in as one of my fellow "PTA parents" here at home, addressing a school volunteers meeting. If Bowen is the kind of elected official who will fill all the seats in Sacramento once Clean Money is implemented, I'm very much looking forward to it. I'd vote for her. In fact, I will: she's running for Secretary of State in the June 6 primary and hopefully November election, and she supports not only Clean Money but also Open Voting. Yay!
So Bowen explains what happened: basically she didn't have enough votes for the thing to pass. Romero was a definite NO vote, so she says we lost nothing by Romero failing to show up today. She personally doesn't believe in "courtesy votes" and this wasn't an appropriate time for Romero or any other opponent to do one anyway-- the bill just didn't have enough votes to win. We have to do a lot more work on Romero and Murray, and they have to hear it from their constituents. And Perata decided to put this vote off today. Huh? Umm, Perata just told us that Bowen decided to take this off the agenda today! Hmm... OK, one of them is lying... and guess who I'm betting on? She briefly summarises the objections she is hearing about the bill, and very sincerely shares with us her hopes that we can get this thing passed.
It becomes obvious to me that Perata and probably others are trying to put this off until after the June 6th primary. Anyway, after Bowen leaves, Susan Lerner leads us in a brief Q&A, thanks us for all our work and for the follow-through in Perata's office, and asks us to stick around to fan out to individual Senators' offices after lunch. We decide to break for lunch.
Whereas Bowen was wonderfully open and eager to help, her Chief of Staff was very defensive and annoyed with us. On the way out, he expressed particular irritation with us forming an impression that Romero skipped town to avoid attending this session.
AND THIS IS WHERE I BECOME A LOBBYIST
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After lunch, we decide to fan out to key Senators' offices. And here is where I get to become a lobbyist.
My Senator is Jackie Speier. She was the aide to the late Congressman Ryan who was shot and left for dead in Guyana during the Jim Jones massacre. She fought her way back to health and continued her political career as an elected representative, got term-limited out as a rather popular State Senator, and is now running for Lieutenant Governor. She is also Assistant President pro Tempore, under Perata. Speier signed on as a co-sponsor to AB 583 when it made its way into the Senate.
So I group up with two other volunteers, and off we go to Speier's office. She's not there. The aide knew about AB 583, did not know what happened this morning, so we related our story. He replies that Senator Speier does not co-author bills lightly, and she really is committed to Clean Money. We ask her if she can please, as assistant pro Tempore, try to meet with Murray and Romero and get them to see the light on AB 583. He replies that she cannot; she had to defer to her boss, Perata. Gah, that sucks. OK, well she's a co-sponsor of the bill, can she approach them as her role as a co-author of the bill, then? Well, he's not sure about that, he'll ask.
From there we go on a tour of several other Senators' office. No Senators to be seen, of course, just various receptionists and aides. I get to watch some of the more expert Clean Money volunteers do some "tabling" on them. Amazingly, it works: most of the aides had never heard of the bill, we explain it, point them to links to it, and they write down notes to pass along. We are also asked for "literature"-- we didn't waste our time bringing it since that stuff just gets thrown into the garbage anyway. But I got to watch the experts take names and numbers, give out theirs, and generally spread awareness about AB 583 and Clean Money.
WHAT WORKED?
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We were determined. We'd travelled all the way to Sacramento and we weren't just going to all drive home and sulk. We got pissed off, then we decided to do something about it. We made the most of our time there. We improvised and adapted. We wanted to send the message that, we're not going away, and no matter how many times they try to shove this thing under the rug, kill it in committee, or just hope it will go away, we are not going away. Ever. And we demonstrated that in a visceral, visual, personal way, by physically refusing to leave. Not only will the idea of Clean Money never go away, its supporters won't either! The Senate needs to either pass this thing or be harangued by it for the rest of their careers. There is nothing more powerful than follow-through.
WE NEED TO DO MORE OF THIS
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Folks, this is the kind of stuff that the wingnuts have been doing for 20 years, and it's why they've wiped the floor with us. We complain about the Christian Right Theocrats, but we shouldn't, because all they've been doing is what we are just now learning to do: organise, pressure, and lobby. How did they get anti-science, "under god", and gay-bashing bills into their state legislatures? Exactly like this. This stuff works: dedicated citizens who believe in their cause enough to be willing to interrupt their lives to run to the state capitol and lobby their representatives. And to be determined enough to be willing to interrupt their represenatives' days too! This is how Democracy works-- if we work it. It's not easy and it is frustrating. But we have to do this stuff otherwise we are just forfeiting our citizenship. I love how Governor Dean puts it: voting isn't enough, it's just an ante to get into the game. Only through organising can you actually win anything.
And we should be working to reduce the tremendous power of big-money corporate industry lobbyists, because the big money can indeed trump the individual citizen lobbyist-- something I got to personally experience today. I'm convinced that the big money which permeates Sacramento is what's making this such an uphill battle for us. Why do Perata and Romero and Murray seem so threatened by Clean Money? I haven't looked at their sources of campaign funding, but I suspect what I'll find: they're excellent fundraisers with lots of big-money donations in their war-chests.
Overall, I'm with Markos and Jerome on this one: the big-money donors and consultants of both the Democratic and the Repug parties are the gatekeepers. Clean Money not only "crashes" the gate, but removes it entirely.
