Action Alert! - Let's Keep this drive alive!
Joanne O'Neill
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Hello you wonderful New Jersey citizens,
The good news in New Jersey is that we now have a bill asking the US Congress to overturn Citizens United by Constitutional Amendment that has cleared committee in the State Senate. We presented the committee with 12,500 petition signers from multiple petition drives on the topic and we won in committee with 3 affirmatives and 1 abstention. But real success still DEPENDS ON YOU.
NJ Senate Resolution 47 (SR47) states our support to the US Congress for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, and if it passes in this session it can GO DIRECTLY to the US Congress for consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee under Senator Patrick Leahy on July 17th. We are excited to see such hearings take place at the national level and we want our bill to be a part of it! http://www.leahy.senate.gov/press/press_releases/release/?id=d0e9023e-7069-41ee-a428-e846eff4c0d2
The first task is to get this Senate Resolution on the agenda of the full Senate for either JUNE 25th or JUNE 28th. IF YOU CAN FIND TIME TO HELP – PLEASE JUMP IN! Call the following legislators ASAP and ask to have SR47 put on the Senate agenda in June:
Senate President Stephen Sweeney, (856) 251-9801
Your District Senator (VERY IMPORTANT) - http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/districts/districtnumbers.asp - also, ask him or her to co-sponsor SR47
Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, (201) 928-0100
Assist. Majority Leader and Co-Sponsor Linda Greenstein, (609) 395-9911
Prime Sponsor of SR47, Jeff Van Drew, (609) 465-0700
SR47 Co- Sponsor & Committee Member, Barbare Buono (732) 205-1372
State Government...Committee Chair Jim Whelan (609) 383-1388
When calling, I always ask directly for the elected official with whom I’d like to speak. You never know, they might pass you through. If asked for your affiliation, tell them you are with the NJ for the Overturn of Citizens United campaign (or MoveOn or other affiliation if you’d rather). Of course, the reality of calling is that you will typically end up talking to an aide. That’s fine. They are there to take input from the citizenry. Tell them that you support SR47, that you want to see it on the agenda of the full State Senate in June, and that you consider it the most important issue before the state legislature.
Emphasize the critical timing of the bill’s passage with the US Senate Judiciary hearings on a Constitutional Amendment beginning July 17th. Note that NJ for the Overturn of Citizens United presented 12,500 petitions from all over NJ to the Senate committee and that we are still collecting signatures! Emphasize that support for the bill within the Senate is already strong (we’ve been told it should pass, although I cannot offer any concrete percentage or guaranteed numbers). And finally point out that the resolution is fairly narrow and very straightforward.
If you are ambitious and complete the list of people above, we are also continuing to press the NJ Assembly to put AR86, which is identical to SR47, on its State Government Committee agenda, pass it and then take it successfully to the floor of the Assembly. To help in this cause, you can call the following:
State Government Committee Chair Linda Stender: (908) 668-1900
Assembly Speaker, Sheila Oliver: (973) 395-1166
Assembly Majority Leader, Louis Greenwald: (856) 435-1247
AR86 Prime Sponsor, Herb Conaway: (856) 461-3997
KEEP ALL THESE PHONE NUMBERS HANDY.
You can also EMAIL your representatives in both the senate and the assembly. Find them here: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/districts/districtnumbers.asp or use this alphabetized browsing page http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/members/abcroster.asp. Legislative leadership is found here: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/members/leadership.asp. The website will offer a form for contacting the legislator, but you can also email legislators directly by using an e-address formed by ~
“sen”+“lastname”@njleg.org -- for State Senators
-OR-
“asm”+“lastname”@njleg.org -- for Assemblypersons
Emailing Senate President Sweeney: sensw...@njleg.org (856) 251-9801
Emailing Senate Majority Leader Weinberg: senwe...@njleg.org (201) 928-0100
Emailing State Government Committee Chair Linda Stender: asmst...@njleg.org (908) 668-1900
Emailing Assembly Speaker, Sheila Oliver: asmo...@njleg.org (973) 395-1166
Emailing Assembly Majority Leader, Louis Greenwald: asmgre...@njleg.org (856) 435-1247
Emailing AR86 Prime Sponsor, Herb Conoway: asmco...@njleg.org (856) 461-3997
We believe that THE VOTES ARE THERE in both the State Senate and Assembly to move these resolutions forward to Washington DC. The obstacle we face is not opposition but instead hesitation to set this priority. Your continuing calls to these legislators will make the difference. Together we can help get the money out of politics; we can make our votes count. Your calls are the solution. If you go on line, you can track the progress of both resolutions and continue to press our state representatives. Remember, it's "We the People" not we the corporations. SUCCESS ON ALL OTHER ISSUES FLOWS FROM SUCCESS ON THIS ISSUE.
CONTACTS:
Susannah Newman
Mark Doenges
THANK YOU
My apologies for repeated emails, but as you can see “The time, it doth tick away.” ;-) Fairly soon, we’ll be falling back into the much less glamorous mode of building membership, ‘organizing,’ waiting for new sessions of our legislature, and trying to pass ‘local’ resolutions. You’ll get a lot less emails from me then. But right now, we need to close the deal. We need to see the culmination of a lot of hard work. Let’s not lose our momentum right in the final turn.
Please Help. Thx.
Mark