Jan 31 -- Domestic

In my group leader call with Douglas, focusing on domestic RESULTS issues, an urgent call was needed to Senator Grassley's office to ask for his support for the Harkin amendment temporarily increasing food stamps, as part of the Economic Stimulus package now being debated on the Senate floor. I hope Polly won't feel offended that I made a call first and then called her to make a call, given as it was an easy call to make and needed to be done within the hour. I was pleased at the relative ease of getting to the ag aide -- only took two minutes! Amanda, the ag aide, said that they would be looking at the increase in food stamps in the Farm Bill to avoid duplication, but that the Harkin amendment was certainly "on their radar."

Another focus right now is to get face-to-face meetings with our members of Congress. Kathy has the name and number of Loebsack's scheduler and will put in follow-up calls with our request for a meeting.

As an outreach activity, I told Douglas I was going to compile the list of Churches United communities and email them a notice for their monthly newsletter -- on a regular basis -- explaining RESULTS and inviting them to the monthly meetings.

Finally, I have put on my calendar for Monday that I will start working on the Op-Ed in the Gazette. I'll include it on the blog for your perusal prior to submitting it.

Thanks for all you do for RESULTS!

Jan 30 Global

In tonight's group leader call we got the good news that the microcredit letter sent from Congress to World Bank President Zoellick had 30 Senate signers and about 40 House signers.

The letter asks Zoellick to do several things:
increase the amount of money the World Bank devotes to microcredit
give microcredit loans to the poorest of the poor, those living on less than one dollar a day
report back to Congress with progress on microcredit

Both letters closed this week. I am grateful to Polly for making calls to Senator Harkin's office and Senator Grassley's office prior to the closing of the Senate letter, asking them to sign on.

The energy focus is going to be on face-to-face meetings with our members of Congress. Kathy is going to make follow-up calls to Loebsack's office asking for a meeting in Cedar Rapids during the evening.

2008 Goals

The CR Area RESULTS Group wants to achieve big things in 2008, including

two meetings each with our three members of Congress, one meeting at the international conference in July and a second face-to-face here in Cedar Rapids; for that we will rely on relationships built by two of our members whose focus is members of Congress;

four op-ed pieces in the Gazette, building on a partnership that was developed in 2007;

increasing our activists to 12, using outreach efforts to Alternative Gift Market communities and Churches United congregations;

raising $4000 to send two activists to the international conference in Washington in July;

and continuing the rich tradition built in 2007 of writing effective letters to members of Congress and writing Letters to the Editor for the Gazette;

in addition, we want to have one TV and one radio news story based on our activities on behalf of the poor and the hungry in this nation and around the world.

We are always eager to share our important work, so come join us!