POWERSHIFT’09: What it was
The largest lobby day in history.
That was what we were told we would be a part of on Monday when we arrived. And it was repeated more than once over the weekend, may have even become the mantra: we, over 10,000 eighteen-to-twentysomethings, would swarm the halls of our Congress to demand clean and green legislative action on climate change.
And so we did. Monday was off to a great start; there was a blizzard the night before and those of us who weren’t staying close to the Capitol had a slow time of it taking transit into the city in the morning, with at least 6 inches of snow and counting.
Snow doesn't scare us.
But we made it, and our crew in particular visited Congressman Tim Murphy and Congressman Mike Doyle’s offices to talk to their staffers in charge of energy and environmental policy. Twenty people, much less young people, showing up at a rep’s office is pretty unusual, and so we know we made a visual impact. Meanwhile, other groups who had come to Powershift from all over the country were meeting with their representatives and senators. (Proud to say, though, that Pennsylvania had the second-largest number of attendees at 600).
The first of several trainings
The conference itself offered lots of opportunity to focus on your particular interests or fill in the gaps — I attended a session that specifically spelled out things to look for in really strong legislation against climate change– and there were also movies, chances to meet and talk state-by-state, and lengthy training sessions where we role-played how to lobby a member of Congress on Monday (Mac and I volunteered to help with the training, which consisted of us pretending to be the elected member that the group was trying to lobby; this was pretty fun for me).
Pittsburgh-colors AND robots??? Must be the ROBO-BEES
But what we could not have ever expected or hoped for, this particular conference also gave us: robot fights. That’s right folks, there were robot fights going on at the Powershift conference…okay, that’s not exactly true; really, the regional high school robotics competition was also taking place at the Washington Convention Center, and the we definitely made the most of our down-time checking it out.
We met some pretty awesome people in PA from all different schools and organizations that we’re looking forward to working with — we hope to have a follow-up event soon; maybe you can come and meet them, too.
-Carly
- The Pittsburgh, PA lobby team
