 recording in progress. All right. So let's let me just start sharing my screen. One second here. All right. So again, thank you everyone for joining. I'm very excited to have you here. Quickly just going to go over our agenda. So we're going to go over the current state of the budget process. I think this is important. Some people already have an idea about where we are, but let's go over it quickly together. We're going to go over as well. What is our ask, right? So we're going to, we want to set up meetings with our congressional representatives. What are we actually going there to ask them to do? Having a very clear ask is important. We're going to go over understanding congressional advocacy 101. This is really where we're going to get down to some of the nuts and bolts of how you actually set up a meeting with your representative, the roles that you need during the meeting, and good follow up. And then we're going to go over our could be Congress toolkit, which everyone will have available to them. So we can go ahead and get started. So a couple of things just right off the top that's really important is we're hosting this training at an important time, right? So for the month of August, Congress members will be in district on August recess, which means that they'll be attending events in their district, largely online at this point, right? And are more likely to be available for meetings with constituents, right? So this is this is the ideal time to try to set up a meeting with your representative or and or their staff. So this is an opportune moment. Another reason why we're having this training at this moment and why we're talking to people about reaching out to their congressional representatives is that we're also at a very important moment in the budget process. So on the screen, I just have a small explanatory slide about what happens and how the National Defense Authorization Act moves through Congress. So if you don't know, Congress deliberates every year on the National Defense Authorization Act, which sets the military's budget for the following year. And, you know, while what's on screen might look a little complicated, put simply the House and the Senate vote to approve sometimes different versions of the National Defense Authorization Act, which then have to be reconciled and set up for a final vote, which is then sent to the president to approve or veto. The only thing that we need to know right for this process at this moment is that the last four steps of the process are where we can really actually speak out, talk to our Congress people, make sure that they know our opinion about the National Defense Authorization Act, and we'll talk a little bit about what that is, right? So I've just put a red arrow where we are currently in the process. You can see it here. If you see there, this typically occurs in late April or May or in August. Things are extremely delayed this year for a variety of reasons, but that's okay. I mean, that means during August recess, we actually get a chance to go and talk to our representatives about the National Defense Authorization Act. So where are we? What is our opinion on the National Defense Authorization Act? Well, it's important that we know a couple of things that have happened very recently. So in late July, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to raise the baseline Pentagon budget to $740 billion and compared to 2021, which was $715 billion for the baseline budget, that is a large increase, right? And that is an increase even over what President Biden requested the Pentagon budget to be, right? So the Senate Armed Services Committee said, President Biden, we see your request for increased funds. We're going to add even more funds onto that. And this was big news. You might have heard of it. But I think a lot of what's seen in the news is people say, oh, okay, well, it's inevitable. We're going to increase the Pentagon budget. It's inevitable because the Senate Armed Services Committee said so. Not true, actually, right? And that's why it's important that we understand the National Defense Authorization Process. The Senate Armed Services Committee might have increased the baseline budget, but that doesn't mean that that's going to happen. That is inevitable. The House and the Senate must agree on the final defense bill. And this is where we come in, right? Going and reaching out to our Congresspeople in this moment is exactly what we need to be doing, right? Because it's really urgent that we show our representatives that there cannot be an increase to the military budget. We're still in the middle of a pandemic and, of course, economic crisis, as we all know. And it's just completely unacceptable to even begin to consider adding any money to the Pentagon budget, let alone $37 billion, right? So this is not inevitable. That's why we're here today. And in brighter news, better news, actually. Another thing that's really important about where we are in this moment is that some progressive champions in Congress who consistently worked to slash Pentagon spending like Representative Barbara Lee recently introduced House resolution 476 to cut $350 billion from the Pentagon budget and reinvest in our communities. So this is legislation that would do exactly what we want to do, right? Which is take much larger amounts of the Pentagon budget that we currently have and put that towards green jobs, healthcare, you know, green infrastructure, things that we actually need at this moment. So Congresswoman Lee introduced this legislation last year and received 26 cosponsors. This year, there are only four cosponsors on the bill and they're on the screen. You'll notice some Congress people you'd expect to see listed as cosponsors aren't there. And this comes down to the fact really that they've been busy probably and they haven't been reminded or directly asked by a constituent to cosponsor the bill again, right? So which I think is another key reason why we're setting up meetings with and developing a relationship with congressional representatives is so important, right? I think people sometimes don't understand that the Congress people sometimes are just busy and that's why they haven't done it. So it's, you know, on us as people who are dedicated to peace legislation that will actually make a real difference to make that ask of them, right? Making sure that bills that we wholeheartedly support receive the congressional backing that they should, right? So I went over a lot there obviously, but I just want to be clear and just summarize our asks very simply. When we're in these meetings with our congressional representatives, we want to do three things that are extremely important, right? No new funding for nuclear weapons, which is currently in the National Defense Authorization Act, reduce the Pentagon budget by at least 10% and cosponsor House Resolution 476, which is Congresswoman Barbara Lee's legislation to cut Pentagon funding by $350 billion. Does this mean obviously that your congressperson will agree to all of those things? No, not necessarily, but these are the important things that we need to be asking our congressional representatives. So I see someone raised their hand. If you could post your question in the chat box and we'll make sure that any questions that people have are going, we'll answer them at the end here. So those are some of our asks and this is what's important that we understand when we go into these meetings. But now I just want to talk about a couple of tips and resources and tools that will help you set up a meeting with your congressional representative. So I'll just go over these general tips and resources and then like I said, we're going to go over our Code Pink Congress toolkit. So first thing, I do want to emphasize how important constituents are in the advocacy process that we're going to be talking about, especially constituents who take time to meet with their representative in person. I do want to emphasize how important that is, because actually taking the time to go and meet with them, they don't often get people who meet with them about specific bills, especially the bills that we're talking about. So it does make a big difference. And I do want to just give one example of something that we did with Code Pink and some coalition partners. So just a really short anecdote in 2019, we actually met here in Los Angeles with Kamala Harris's, then Senator Harris's staff to co-sponsor Senate Bill 1039, which was just legislation to prevent a war on Iran. And our group was made up of constituents and members of the Iranian community in Southern California. And we set up a meeting with then Senator Harris's office with a very clear message, right, that there should be no war with Iran and that the sanctions that are devastating Iranians should be lifted immediately. Those were our two main points of the meeting and we stuck to those points very clearly and made the hard ask of Senator Harris's staff to co-sponsor Senate Bill 1039. So after meeting with her staff, we followed up with a nice email asking for any updates, right? Thank you for meeting us with us. Again, we want to reiterate our points. Please let us know when you will co-sponsor this bill, right? We then engaged our community in a social media place, right? We were calling on Kamala to co-sponsor the bill, right? So we have the meeting and then we have people tweeting on her, emailing her and even calling her to co-sponsor Senate Bill 1039. And, you know, people, countries of people were taking that action and were watching to make sure that she did it, right? And after meeting with our staff and doing that short social media action, we finally got the confirmation that Senator Harris would co-sponsor the bill calling for no war on Iran. And before we went into that meeting, she was very much against co-sponsoring the bill. She wouldn't give us a straight answer. And after our meeting, after with our solid follow-up, right, and with a coalition of constituents with a clear ask, right, we were able to successfully get her to co-sponsor that bill. And she was extremely necessary that she co-sponsored that bill in the Senate because she was holding it up. So, you know, I think it's really important just to remember that a strong coalition of constituents with a very clear ask, like the one that we're talking about, can change their congressional representative's mind on an issue by demonstrating that people they represent care about the issue and are willing to follow through on their promises to take public action in support of legislation, right? So, I think that's a really important lesson for us to keep in mind when we're talking about this. So, okay, that's, you know, important, and we understand the importance of that. But how do you actually set up a meeting with your local representative, right? What are the actual nuts and bolts? And this is, this is equally important. And we're here to demystify the process, right? So, the first thing you're going to do is contact the scheduler. So, once you get in contact with the congressional office, and we'll show you in just a minute how you actually do that using our Code Pink Congress toolkit, but you're going to contact the scheduler and be ready to provide them with the information that's on the screen, right? Which is who you are and where you're from, the issue that you would like to address during the meeting, a desire to meet with the congressperson or a relevant staffer, right? And importantly, your contact information, right? So, this is not something that you have to memorize, because we've actually already written out very clear, very easy to follow sample emails you can send to your congressperson's scheduler. So, you'll see some of the elements of the email that I just referenced are really clearly laid out, right? So, as a member of Code Pink, you're telling them who you are. A grassroots women's anti-war organization, I'm writing to request a meeting with you and your aides to discuss your representatives' name, recent vote on legislation, which could have cut the Pentagon budget by 10%, and then you'll see all of this information that you need. I'll be available to meet with you at your location office, right? So, you want to make sure you specify that you're available to meet with them in their office. They'll likely want to set up a Zoom meeting, but whatever you want, you know, just making sure that they're clear, you want an in-district meeting. And then, this is extremely important, including some dates that you would be available to meet, right? This is important for the scheduler because they can get back to you then with some specific yes or no on those dates. And then, very important that you include your name, your address, so they know that you're a constituent and your phone number, so they can reach you. So, this is a really good sample email that includes all of the information that I referenced before. So, what happens after that? Usually, what happens is you have to follow up with a phone call because they don't always respond to you, and maybe you all have had that experience that people haven't responded to your email. So, following up with a phone call is extremely important, and it's a lot harder to ignore a phone call, right? And so, similarly, we have a sample phone script that you can actually follow and use, of course, insert the important information that you need to. And we even, you know, prepared for the almost inevitable response from the office, which is that they're not available on those dates. So, that can happen, right? They'll say they're not available. Okay, great. We already have a response ready, right? Which is, could you let me know some dates that the congressperson or staff person might be available, right? So, again, we're not going to let them off the hook and just let them say we're not available. Sorry, right? Okay, let's find the time when they are while we're on the phone. This is really important as well. So, then, you know, we have scheduled a meeting. Hopefully, you've found a time and a date that works for everyone. And then, of course, you have to prepare for the meeting, right? So, these are a couple of things that are important when considering how to prepare for a meeting, and I'm going to go over them. You'll see them on the screen. So, the first is research congressperson's stances on the issues, right? So, if you're their constituent, you might know some of their stances on the issues that we're talking about. One clear thing you could do is look to see if they've already co-sponsored Representative Barbara Lee's House Resolution 476. It's likely that they haven't since only four representatives have, right? But otherwise, right, you can look at their background and use that might be relevant to the issue. What is their foreign policy view in general? What committees and caucuses do they serve on? Right? Just being aware of some of the congressperson's stances and power, right? In actual, in congress. And then the second is discuss a clear ask to make of the congressperson. We've already done that, right? We have three very clear asks that we want to make of the congressperson that they can say yes or no to, right? I can't emphasize enough how important that is. So, the meeting doesn't feel like it's sort of meandering, right? You actually have very clear asks, will they do this? Will they support cuts dependent on budget? No new funding to nuclear weapons and Barbara Lee's legislation. So, that's extremely important. Discuss roles and order of speakers. So, this is something we're going to get into in just a minute here. But you want to make sure that you always have someone to who's there on the call who has a clear understanding of who is doing what. We'll get into that in just a second. And then finally, prepare resources to leave behind. This is also important, right? So, you had a conversation with your congressperson or relevant staff members. And after that conversation, you want to make sure that you follow up either with some talking points that, you know, are relevant to your conversation, in this case about the Pentagon budget. And also, right, make sure you follow up with an email that we'll discuss as well in just a second. So, those are some good things to keep in mind when preparing for a meeting. And again, we'll have all of these slides available to everyone so you can go back and review them as well. Okay. So, like I said, once you're in the meeting and you're actually speaking to the congressperson and their staff, it's very important to assign very clear roles for everyone to ensure that it runs smoothly. They have a clear ask of the congressperson. And then it's not just all over the place, right? I'm sure everyone has been in a meeting like that. So, there are, you know, four roles to keep in mind. This doesn't mean that there has to be four people in the meeting. One person can take on several walls if you need them to. But these are sort of the distinct things that need to get done in the meeting in order for it to be successful. So, there's facilitator, constituent, closer, and note taker. And like I said, right, there doesn't have to be a distinct constituent, right? If everyone in the room is a constituent, fantastic, right? That's what we want. But to make sure that it's clear that you are their constituents and they should be listening to you, it's very important. So, let me just have a little bit deeper into each of these roles. So, the facilitator, so this is an extremely important role that someone can play in the meeting, right? This is someone who's going to keep the discussion moving, making sure that you're steering the conversation back to the main ask always, right? This is someone who is going to confirm how much time you have for the meeting, right? So, we'll say, okay, we have 30 minutes for this meeting. That means when we introduce ourselves, we won't take very long, right? That means when we're making the asks, we're not rambling or meandering. We have to get straight to the point, right? The facilitator is also someone who starts the meeting, right? And thanks to the office or the congressperson if available. Thanks to them for something positive they've done. If that's available, if not, that's okay, too. And then also, very clearly, open by clearly sitting in the main ask, right? We're here to ask the congressperson to commit to voting against an increased Pentagon budget, voting for a decreased Pentagon budget, voting against any new nuclear weapons. Very important that the facilitator is the first person to make sure that the ask is set at the beginning. And then from there, the facilitator will be the person to go around and ask everyone to briefly introduce themselves if there are multiple people in the room with you, right? Again, as a facilitator, it's your job to make sure that the meeting is running smoothly and making sure that the meeting stays on track, right? So that's the role of the facilitator. Next, like I said, the constituents are important because they're there to tell their story and why they're there as constituents and why it matters to them that the congressperson actually signs on to or commits to a certain action, right? So again, of course, as we know, right? Congresspeople are going to listen to constituents because they're there to represent you, right? But also, this is a good time to include constituents who might be representatives from local organizations. So in the example that I included, right? Code Pink really led the way on asking Senator Harris to co-sponsor that Senate legislation. But in the process, we wanted to include other constituents and other voices in the community who she might not have heard from. So in this case, members of the Iranian community in Southern California. So that can also be very important. And like I said, this is not necessarily a distinct role, but as long as you have people there who are their constituents and can speak to being a constituent, is very important. And then the final two roles, fairly simple. The closer, right? This person can also be the facilitator. But before the close of the meeting, you want to make sure that you reiterate any of the asks that you're there to talk about, right? So just saying something as simple as I hope you will vote to cut the Pentagon budget by 10%, you know, that's why we're here. So after listening to all of these people's reasons as to why they should support this legislation or co-sponsor this legislation, you need to be clear this is what we need from the Congressperson. The closer can also make sure that you, you know, if there are any questions that they will get back to them about those questions. And just making sure that the closer is available for any questions that the Congresspeople or the office has. And then the note taker, I think this is something that people can sometimes forget to include, but is actually incredibly important. A little, you know, we touched on this earlier. But the note taker, somebody who should take notes of the main points of the discussion, obviously, right? Understanding any objections that the Congressperson might have raised, any talking points that they were using, right? We'll often hear economic reasons against cutting the Pentagon budget. Well, we actually have counterpoints and things we need to respond with after those kind of arguments are made. So making sure we understand the nature of why a Congressperson might disagree or refuse to sign on to something is just as important as understanding when they will actually sign on. And then finally, right? The note taker can also sort of take note of body language and tone in the meeting. As I'm sure you've all been in a meeting where you can tell, right, based on body language or tone, if the staff or the Congressperson is reticent to really sign on to something or commit to an actual action that they're wanting to take, you should really take note of that. Or if the questions that they're asking are genuine, right? And they're just, they just want more information. So including both the substance of what was said and also some of the body language and tone is incredibly important for the note taker to take. So those are some of the key roles that people can play in the actual meeting. And then after the meeting, and I've said this, but incredibly important after the meeting to do follow up. And, you know, we just want to debrief, discuss, and then importantly designate someone to actually actually follow up with their Congressperson. So, you know, debrief the meeting together, obviously not within your shot of the staff person. If you're in person, don't do it in the hallway. If you're on a Zoom meeting, definitely make sure that the staff person has left the Zoom meeting. Discuss follow up steps and be clear on who is doing what, right? So that's when you're going to designate someone to write a brief thank you email to sign off on, right? You want to make sure you send an email to the staff person reiterating your asks, answering any questions they might have had. Maybe this is the time that you include some of the talking points that will give you around the Pentagon budget. And then discuss, you know, making sure that you get a hard, you include a hard question to them, which is will the Congressperson do the things that we discussed, right? Because that follow up email, the point of that is to make sure that the staff member knows that they need to respond to you, right? It's not just a thank you, we appreciate your time. It's will the Congressperson do this? So that's incredibly important. So just a quick overview of a couple of things that we've done that we've gone over. And I think some of the main questions that people have or how sometimes people feel uncomfortable or a little bit stressed about doing this, right? So some of the dues that we should focus on is focus on the main ask and repeat it often. I know I've said that many times I sound like a broken record, but there's one thing you take away from this is that. And the facilitator, this is really important. If you feel like the conversation is getting sidetracked off task, it is your job as the facilitator to make sure that the conversation actually comes back on track that you reframe the conversation in a way that's helpful, right? So not just letting people ramble, you do have to sometimes step in, if necessary. And then some other dues, it can be helpful and nice if you can take a photo with the congressperson if they're there and share on social media. That's not always possible. And then just some of the don'ts, right? I mean, I said this, but don't feel intimidated. It's something that, you know, the congresspeople are there and their staff are there to talk to you. So don't feel intimidated. If you go in with clear asks, you'll have a much better meeting than many people who go into the congressperson's office. Don't make up an answer if you don't know it. It's okay to not know. Just say that's a good question. We'll get back to you, right? Don't get sidetracked, like I said. And don't get defensive. I mean, you know, obviously, in some of these cases, we'll disagree vehemently with some of the reasoning that congresspeople or their staff have for not supporting a cut to the Pentagon budget. It doesn't really help us to be defensive in the meeting. So just a quick overview of what we just went over. It's a lot of information. Again, everyone will receive it at the end. To review, right? At the end of the day, meeting with your congressperson and their staff is being as persuasive and consistent as possible. So that means introducing yourself, making the core ask, making sure that you have a reason behind that ask, right? Like, I'm a constituent. This matters to me for these reasons. Support that ask with facts and we'll give you all of the talking points that we have around reducing the Pentagon budget. Say thank you. And then if you can request a virtual photo. So I'm just quickly now going to do one final thing, which is go over what our toolkit consists of. So we have this online and it's very helpful. So I just wanted to quickly review that for people. And I'm just going to open it on my screen. Second. Can people see it now? I just dragged it onto my screen. Now you can't see it. Let me stop screen sharing and then go back. Give me a second. Okay. Can people see it now? Yes. Okay. Thanks, Allie. Appreciate it. Okay. So this is something everyone will have, but this is actually really key, right? I mean, all of the things that we talked about, these are really good things to keep in mind. This is how you prepare for a meeting, but how do you actually contact your Congress people and who do you contact? I think is a question that is very important that we address, right? So like Allie posted in the chat, you'll have this available to you, but I just wanted to quickly go over some of the elements. So on our website, we have a few tools that are always available. So first things first, which is really important is our contact Congress tool. So if you just toggle this button here, you'll see that you can actually contact House and Senate staffers when you click on this link. So we're going to take it. It'll take you to a hyperlink outside of our website. This is from our friends at FCNL who are having this excellent resource for us. Let me let it load. Okay. Fantastic. So hopefully people can see what I'm seeing on my screen, which is the information for different Congress people. We're now looking at senators. You can also look for Congress people, their phone number, their scheduler's name and contact information. So that's really important. So all of these conversations that we've been having, who you're reaching out to, who you're going to send the email to to actually set up a conversation with your Congress person, you're actually going to email the scheduler, right? So that's the person that they have all the information on. And sorry, that's where you can find that information here, right? And then importantly, they have their office's phone number. So this is the phone number that you call if you need to to, you know, make sure you have that follow up phone call with the office to set up a meeting time and date. I do this fairly often. We're going to have a conversation with Congressman Polkhan very soon. I went through that same process. I emailed the scheduler, and then I'm now going to do a follow up phone call. It works, right? It's actually something that works fairly simply. So that's important resource that you all have on this on this web page here. And then you can also see you can contact house staffers as well. So hold on one second. I'm going to let this load. Fantastic. So you can see also here, they have more information by states of different representatives in each state and who you can contact there, especially if you know the scheduler can't get won't get back in contact with you, right? So I would scroll down to California. Of course, we have so many representatives in California. And I would find my representative here is Barbara Lee. You can email their chief of staff, their legislative director or the communications director. So if you need to, you can email these people as well. So this is really important and helpful information. And this is all contained here on this web page at code pink dot org slash Congress schools. So one last thing, I just wanted to show people on this web page. If you toggle down here to track legislation, of course, it's not all legislation that's available in Congress, but this is legislation that we're tracking. I could pink so any basically any legislation that's related to to war and peace, we're tracking it here. You can see here House Resolution 476. This is Barbara Lee's legislation that we talked about today. If you click on it, it'll take you right to Congress dot gov where you can always find information about legislation. And then of course you can also see who's cosponsoring the bill. And that's where we have those four Congress people for so far cosponsoring her bill. So that's extremely useful. And that is always up on our website and constantly being updated. So I want to now stop screen sharing. We have about 20 minutes, 10 minutes left, 12 minutes left, sorry, in in our training today. So I wanted to see if there were any questions from people here. I'm going to go ahead and pause the recording here so we can just talk pretty freely together. So let me go ahead and stop recording.