[Peace-discuss] meeting accomplished

[Lisa Chason]

Meeting at Representative Tim Johnson's office accomplished. There weren't
too many people there (3 to be exact). We spoke with the media/press
secretary, Matt Bisbee, for around 40 minutes.

We told him about the 500 postcards that were sent in just 2 days to the
senators from Illinois. We told him about how great the voice is out there
to counter what the president is doing. We gave him our packet of background
information, saying that at the town meeting in August Mr. Johnson said he
hadn't made up his mind yet in part becasue he didn't have enough
information. We weren't able to give the kind of info or arguments Doug
Rokke has suggested but that's OK -- Doug is in touch with their office
directly and his contributions were highly praised. Lois shared her copy of
The Nation and suggested they take out a
subscription. Marcia very effectively underpinned her remarks with her
PTA-girl scout-librarian credentials.

Mr. Bisbee told us that when he went around with Tim in the summer he found
it striking that even in the small rural towns they mostly were hearing the
opinion not to attack Iraq. He also told us that the administration is
heavily courting the congress -- that when Tim got off the plane last week
in Washington he and 9 other reps were met at the airport by Condoleesa(?)
Rice and CIA head George Tennet, taken to the west wing of the White House
and were lobbied for 2 hours about the President's postion. He told us that
Tim is "absolutely sitting on the fence on this one" and has no idea what
position he is going to take but it sure is helpful that we've done what
we've done blah blah blah

Assessment: good that we did this. They're clearly aware of AWARE -- he
asked if we were only local or also national (our retort: there are many of
us out there). Especially important now -- for the first time since 9/11/01
there seems to be some space at the national level to say/hear something
not totally predictable.  Such meetings will be so much more pleasant when
Carl is in office.

Thanks to all who were involved,
Lisa