[Peace] Fwd: FILIBUSTER AT UIUC

[Laura Haber]

see below for an interesting protest idea.
 
-Laura

hannah son <hhson at uiuc.edu> wrote:
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 17:49:11 -0500
From: hannah son <hhson at uiuc.edu>
Subject: Fwd: FILIBUSTER AT UIUC
To: esarery at uiuc.edu, hamidito at uiuc.edu, chrejsa at uiuc.edu, badr at uiuc.edu,
lazare at uiuc.edu, amyrios at uiuc.edu, jennyho at uiuc.edu, vcarreon at uiuc.edu,
slaughter at uiuc.edu, rbarua at uiuc.edu, msimon at uiuc.edu,
finucane at uiuc.edu, lhaber at uiuc.edu, lmccoy at uiuc.edu, laska at uiuc.edu,
devenpor at uiuc.edu, jduax at uiuc.edu, frias at uiuc.edu, rscott2 at uiuc.edu

hey guys, (read below) 
..



.....

.


....
who's in?
(i'm thinking in front of the union or maybe under a tree on 
the quad. your thoughts? if you know of more ppl who'd be 
interested please forward.. or quality listserves...)

we could start at noon wednesday then go til 5 or midnight
(but we'll have a signup sheet incase ppl passing by want to 
sign up) 

you could freestyle about filibustering, read camus, talk 
about your lack of direction in life, or about the dream you 
had last night. or something overtly political.

this sounds fun and smart. 
_____________________________________________________
swarm this part around, yeah? signup addon ifyes
WED MAY 18
12:00 hannah
12:30
1:00
1:30
2:00
2:30
3:00
3:30
4:00
4:30
5:00




To: hhson at uiuc.edu
From: teresa leonardo <teresal at Princeton.EDU>
Subject: FILIBUSTER AT UIUC
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 15:14:36 -0400

Dear Hannah,

My name is Teresa Leonardo and I am one of the organizers of the Frist 
Filibuster event at Princeton University (www.FilibusterFrist.com).  I 
got your name from an article in the Daily Illini about the 
anti-nuclear option protest held a couple weeks ago.

Here at Princeton we maintained a filibuster in support of the Senate 
filibuster for 16 days continuously and brought the protest to DC where 
we were joined by Congressmen and Senators.  We’ve been covered by the 
Washington Post, New York Times, Time Magazine, CNN, MSNBC, CSPAN, and 
the PBS news hour with Jim Lehrer; we’ve been in the news in England, 
Holland, and Ireland (and likely other countries). 
 
Right now we are looking for organizers to start filibusters in all 50 
states (ideally by this Wednesday.) A filibuster protest at your 
school would be an incredibly powerful statement, especially as part of 
a nation-wide protest.  We need your help.  It really is easy; all you 
need is five students and a couple of books outside.  We will support 
you with all the other details and, with our media contacts, we can 
rapidly spread word of your filibuster.

Please let me know if you would be able to help organize this and/or if 
you know of other people who might be interested.
Below follows more detailed background and logistical information.

Hope to hear from you soon.
best,
Teresa


This letter explains our plans to start filibusters on campuses all 
over the country; it details the ease with which this can be done; it 
lists the things we can do to get you media attention.  Please read it 
with an enthusiastic sense of possibility. 
 
As you likely know, Senator Frist has promised to bring two of the 
controversial judicial nominees to the floor on Wednesday.  He expects 
the Senators uncomfortable with these nominees to begin a filibuster, 
at which point he plans to implement the nuclear option.  When I began 
working with the other students on my campus, I did so because I 
thought that it was important to protect the Senate institution of the 
filibuster.  I don’t believe I understood then, however, how important 
it really is.  After three weeks, it has sunk in, and I realize it on 
an emotional level: the nuclear option would devastate our political 
system, in institutional and cultural terms.  It would fatally 
compromise the ideological independence of the judiciary, the branch of 
government most crucial to shelter from ideological pressures; it would 
be nothing less than a constitutional coup.  It would also likely 
destroy beyond the possibility of repair the ability of members of both 
parties to work tog ether.  Partisanship is divisive now; imagine the 
consequences if the nuclear option is implemented. 
 
But you understand the urgency of the situation.  The question I am 
writing to help you answer is: What can you do to disable the nuclear 
option?  In fact, a lot.  The Princeton students, and the students from 
other campuses who have filibustered, have managed to alter public 
discourse on the filibuster.  We managed this not by the arguments we 
made per se, but by making ourselves into a symbol of concerned and 
disinterested citizens, idealistic and enthusiastic students, the 
generation who will have to deal with the consequences, etc.  You know 
the story about students.   The mock filibuster is a simple and 
eloquent visual symbol.  And, having created that symbol, we got people 
to pay attention to it.    This affects national perception of the 
filibuster controversy.  The loud articulation of student support for 
the institution, coming from a body of citizens entirely uninvolved in 
professional politics, is a counterfoil, a contrast to those Senators, 
who want to implement the nuclear option.  The contrast creates in 
itself the perception that those Senators are acting in radical and 
unprincipled self-interest; a corollary is that it paints the senators, 
who want to protect the filibuster, as simple defenders of American 
government.  We have done some real and substantial work already 
setting the debate in these terms.  But we can do more; we can really 
control the way this country talks about the filibuster. 
 
Our plan is to start filibusters on as many campuses as possible.  Each 
filibuster should start, at the latest, on Tuesday morning.  It should 
continue through to Wednesday, at least until noon; but we should be 
prepared to go to 5 pm.  The goal is to be filibustering when the 
Republican leadership opens the debate on the controversial nominees.  
Imagine what the story will be on Wednesday morning, the day of the 
debate, if 50, 100 schools all across the country have risen up in 
parallel protest.  This will be huge, and the thing is, we can do it – 
we can do it easily.  All it takes is 50 to 100 individual decisions to 
filibuster. 
 
Some of you are still in session.  Others (like us) are in exam 
period.  Others have finished for the year.  It will be easiest for the 
first group but – and I want to stress this – eminently doable for the 
others.  The first and only thing you have to understand about starting 
a filibuster is that it’s really easy. 
 
•           You don’t need to worry about logistics, about planning in 
advance.  You don’t need a microphone or a podium.  All you need is a 
student ready to read or speak for an hour, a student to follow her, 
and a student to follow her, etc.. 
•           It is easy to find the small number you need to start it.  
You will find that the event generates its own momentum very quickly.  
You will have students eager to sign up and participate.  (Okay, you 
will need someone, not speaking, at the site with a sign-up sheet.)   
That’s all you need to do.  If you plan to go from Tuesday morning at, 
say, 10:00 to Wednesday, noon, you only have to get 26 students.  We 
have been assigning half-hour slots because the demand to participate 
is so high; we were generally booked 60 or so hours in advance. 
• The filibuster can run for any length of time. Overnight 
filibusters are great, but you could also do a more simple filibuster 
from, say, 12-5pm.
•           Choose a well-traveled place on campus, so that people know 
what you are doing. 
•           Allow people to read or say whatever they would like.  
Don’t worry about that. 
 
That’s all.  If you want a more elaborate event, you can look at some 
tips at http://www.campusprogress.org/tools.  You can also get 
information about the history of and issues surrounding the Senate 
filibuster.  But you really don’t have to go there.  Just do the 
above. 
 
The effectiveness of this strategy doesn’t lie in the quality, as it 
were, of each particular filibuster event – I don’t even know what 
‘quality’ would mean in this context.  It lies in the simple fact of 
students having a filibuster.  That fact speaks for itself and, if each 
of you start a filibuster, it will speak very loudly indeed. 
 
Once you have decided to start a filibuster, we can help you with the 
rest.  We have received significant media attention and, in so doing, 
have established significant contacts.  We can make sure that people 
across the country know about your particular filibuster. 
 
PUBLICITY
 
•           our website is the most visited site in the world for 
people who want to know about the filibuster.  We will announce your 
filibuster on it and post a statement from you about your reasons for 
holding it.  That statement will be posted alongside statements from 
constitutional luminaries like Larry Tribe of Harvard Law.  
•           Though it is not necessary, you are welcome to start your 
own website and start or (easier) borrow a blog to discuss the event 
and the issues.  We will link to both on our website. 
•           We will help you craft a press release to be sent out on 
Monday announcing your event.
•           We will use our own very extensive list of media contacts 
to issue the release and we have already developed the credibility that 
will make sure people listen. 
•           We can advise you on how best to contact local media and 
get attention from political blogs.  These were the two seeds of our 
publicity success. 
•           We can provide you with talking-points papers to speak with 
media and strategy memos on the way to represent yourself most 
effectively.  (You will never again be impressed – if you ever have 
been – by talking heads on TV.) 
•           We can put you in touch with local political action groups, 
who can help you organize your event and get you in touch with media. 
 
It’s easy and it will be effective.  Simple as that. 
 
Once you have decided to start a filibuster, get in contact with us by 
email.  We’ve set up a dedicated account for you: pctbust at hotmail.com.  
Please email us at that account, putting your state’s abbreviation in 
the title.  Email should include a simple announcement of your 
intention to start a filibuster, and when; three names, each with a 
cell phone number so we can talk strategy in person; the url of any 
website you start or blog on which you are documenting the event.
 
You are welcome to stop reading here, because you know all that you 
need to know.  But there are a few other supplementary pieces of advice 
that I have to give.
 
•           In organizing your filibuster, get in touch with other 
progressive groups on campus – College Democrats, Abortion-rights 
groups, Environmental groups, etc.  The network thus created would be 
able to sustain a filibuster for 5 days even without other students 
signing up. 
•           Recruit faculty to speak.  The media love this.  The media 
covering the filibuster at Princeton got much more excited by a 
Nobel-prize winning physicist (doing nothing more than reading, kind of 
monotonously, from a physics textbook) than all of the Congressmen who 
came to speak.  This, in fact, prompted our first jump to a new level 
in press coverage.  Faculty speakers also engage students on campus.  
Faculty can say something substantial in their own words or read from 
whatever text they choose. 
•           Set up a stand to the side of your filibuster where 
students can call Senators who have not declared how they intend to 
vote on the nuclear option.  Use the text and numbers I provide at the 
bottom of this email. 
•           Prepare a short statement that participants can read at the 
beginning or end of their turn, explaining why you are filibustering.  
You can use ours:
 
We are here today filibustering in support of the filibuster.  Senate 
Majority Leader Bill Frist—the Frist whose family funded the building 
behind me—is pressing what he calls the “nuclear option,” a rule change 
that would ban filibusters of judicial nominations.  Throughout U.S. 
history, the Senate filibuster has served as an important element of 
the checks and balances system, preventing a partisan majority from 
ruling through tyranny while promoting bipartisan compromise and 
moderation.  We are here because we are dismayed at the plan to 
dismantle one of the only protections for the minority party, weaken 
the Senate’s constitutionally recognized duties of advice and consent, 
and rubber-stamp the President’s far-right nominees for the federal 
courts.  The courts belong to all Americans, not just the party in 
power.  And federal judges are appointed to their positions for life, 
which means that unlike the President, who will leave office in four 
years, the judges appointed
today will have an impact on YOU for the next forty years.  So…say YES 
to the Frist filibuster, and NO to Sen. Frist’s attack on the 
filibuster.
 
So that’s it.  I’m sorry its not more complicated, more of an effort.  
I promise you, however, that it is personally satisfying and 
politically effective nonetheless. 
 
I want to say, in conclusion, that the people who started the 
filibuster at Princeton hoped that they could go for one half of one 
day.  We didn’t expect it to go on for more than two weeks; we didn’t 
expect to be on the front page of nytimes.com.  But in hindsight, we 
see how all that happened and we realize how simple it all was. 
 
I look forward to hearing from you. 
 
Best regards,
 
Teresa
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