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Shoshana Abrams: All right. Hello. Welcome everyone to our May FCNL Advocacy Teams National Call. My name is Shoshana Abrams. We are gathered together with 125 teams from 44 states plus D.C. It's really good to be with you all tonight. The numbers are climbing as folks join our call. I'll ask if you're just joining us to take a moment to rename yourself to add your team name after your name, that way we can see where you're all coming from. Thank you so much for taking the time tonight to be here with us live. We have a great call for you.
Shoshana Abrams: So here's what we have. So on tonight's agenda we have a wonderful guest speaker for you: Kyle Bibby from Common Defense. He's the National Campaigns Manager and he's done a lot more. I'll give you his full bio later.
Shoshana Abrams: We're going to do some story-sharing in the middle of the call, which is something we do a lot on our communicator calls but we don't get to do a lot of on these national calls. So be thinking about one or two sentences about something your team has done so far this year in 2020.
Shoshana Abrams: And then we're going to have, of course, our policy update from Heather and Julia to give us the updates on what's happening on the Hill and when you could be most effective in your advocacy.
Shoshana Abrams: And, of course, we'll have time for questions throughout. And I have a couple of announcements there at the end. We're up to 179 participants, so I think that's enough for us to get started.
Shoshana Abrams: Tonight we have Theo Sitther providing tech support, so if you need anything you can message him privately and he'll try and help you out. You can also type your questions in the chat as we go, and you can use the raise hand function on Zoom to ask a question live.
Shoshana Abrams: All right. So let's just get settled. We're going to settle in old school with just a couple of moments of silence. No quotes for you today, but I'm feeling the energy and I could use just a full moment of centering silence as we get started.
Shoshana Abrams: (Silence)
Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful, friends. If you've just joined us, we were in some silence, so that's why you didn't hear anything. Your audio probably is working just fine. Okay. So thank you so much. We're going to go ahead and get started.
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Shoshana Abrams: I'd like to welcome and thank Kyle Bibby for joining us tonight. Kyle, are you still on the line? Saw you earlier.
Kyle Bibby: Yes, I'm here. I'm here.
Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful. Wonderful. Great. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. We're happy to have you on this call. As you heard me say, we have our 125 teams across the country who are on this call. All of them are really... And we talked about this a little bit as we started our work together, all of our teams are really focused on building relationships with their members of congress while working on one policy campaign each year.
Shoshana Abrams: And they're really focused on moving them, no matter where the member's political beliefs are. So we have people trying to move the reddest of red members of Congress and the bluest of blue for our policy objectives. And as you know, we've been really focused on ending endless war and, in particular, repealing the authorizations for use of military force.
Shoshana Abrams: Friends, let me introduce you to who you're going to hear from tonight. Kyle Bibby is currently Common Defense's National Campaign Manager. Common Defense has been an instrumental partner in moving Congress, both Congress, actually, and the administration, towards ending endless war.
Shoshana Abrams: Kyle is a naval academy graduate and a former Marine Corps infantry officer, and a former presidential management fellow with the Obama administration's Office of Management and Budget. He worked for a year as a director for the New Jersey Re-entry Corporation, helping formerly incarcerated people transition back into society, and he's one of the co-founders of the Black Veterans Project. I think a few folks listened to a recent recording with Richard Brookshire, and they sent that around. So I think they'd also be interested in hearing about that.
Shoshana Abrams: So Kyle, there are many things you could talk to us about tonight. But I want to thank you so much for all the work you've done organizing veterans around ending endless war, and also creating that home that I know you created at Common Defense for veterans. I'm hoping tonight you can tell us a little bit about Common Defense's efforts around the End The Forever War Pledge, and what the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan means for Common Defense.
Shoshana Abrams: And I know you were recently interviewed as a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, and you raised concerns about how the story of Afghanistan was being told in the media, so I'm hoping you can talk a little bit more about that as well. So thanks again, and take it away.
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Kyle Bibby: Great. Thank you for that gracious intro. I feel very welcome in this space, particularly among folks who are also organizing on an issue that we care deeply about at Common Defense. So I figured I could tell you a bit about Common Defense, then we'll go into the work we've done specifically around our campaign, our, as we call it, the End The Forever War campaign. And then talk a bit about what we think are the next steps going forward.
Kyle Bibby: Certainly President Biden has made a great announcement in the sense that he wants to end the military mission in Afghanistan, but the way we see it at Common Defense, we are not done until that mission is 100% concluded, so we have to see it all the way through and support our allies in this. And we've worked quite extensively over the past few years with FCNL on this, so we're excited to round the corner and get to the finish line.
Kyle Bibby: So to tell you a little bit about Common Defense. Common Defense is a progressive veterans organization. We were started back in 2016. We are not partisan in the sense that we are officially tied to any political party, but based on the issues that we follow and care for, we are generally more connected to the Democratic party and the progressive wing of the Democratic party.
Kyle Bibby: We have a training organization called The Veterans Organizing Institute, where we train veterans to become community organizers. It doesn't have to be around ending the war, really any issue. In fact, it's actually a great little incubator space for sharing of ideas among former military members who are still very involved in their community via community work. And just a training space for us to also tap into when we're doing work on the Hill around the campaigns that we do now.
Kyle Bibby: We have a PAC, so we also do some electoral work, as well as a [inaudible 00:07:18] which is where the majority of our lobbying work is done. Currently our campaigns are, again, the End The Forever War campaign, which I'll go into detail more in a minute, but also our... We have a campaign on demilitarizing the police as well as a campaign around voters' rights. So we've been taking on those three issues in particular, and a little bit of climate justice as well. We've been taking on those issues, particularly as the Biden administration took over.
Kyle Bibby: So our tactics usually... We do a lot of social media, we do op-eds and LTEs, but our bread and butter, our big movements are usually when we bring groups of veterans down to Washington D.C., we do lobbying just like you all. And we head into... Just like Shoshana said earlier, we'll meet with Republicans, we'll meet with Democrats, we'll meet with anyone who's willing to open the door and have a productive conversation about how we can end these wars and make safer communities around the world.
Kyle Bibby:
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So given what's been going on in the news recently, we figured we'd give you some updates on where we see things going with the Biden administration. First of all, we want to say: don't necessarily believe all the hype that you've heard in some of the news organizations that this was some predetermined thing that President Biden always wanted to do.
Kyle Bibby: We are of the opinion at Common Defense, particularly based off of some of the folks we know that we speak to either within National Security Council or other places within government, the Hill, it was the pressure of organizations like FCNL, Common Defense, and numerous other organizations that emphasized how important it is for us to end these wars that played a massive part in this decision.
Kyle Bibby: So we did see, after the decision was made, a number of news organizations running pieces here and there on, "Well, Biden was always going to do this." And we can tell you absolutely and emphatically that that was absolutely not the case. So keep up the awesome organizing work that you all have been doing at FCNL, and it's an honor to be able to continue to work with you all in that sense.
Kyle Bibby: But we will say, it's important for us to continue to take the initiative and seize the narrative. Just because President Biden has made this decision, like I said earlier, does not mean that this is necessarily something that is a given or that couldn't necessarily change at some point in the future. And just as much as we are having calls right now organizing to talk around, or talk about how to end these forever wars and these endless wars, there are unfortunately people on the other side who are organizing just as much in order to try and prolong these conflicts for whatever reason it is that they see is a reason to do so.
Kyle Bibby: So again, I would certainly encourage, if you all still are planning lobbying around this, if you're still planning letters to the editor, op-eds, calls, petitions, certainly I'd recommend keeping those things going well through the year until the military mission actually comes to a conclusion. And quite frankly, I know FCNL focuses pretty heavily on not just literally getting every set of boots off the ground in country, but also undoing a lot of the legal framework that exists that allow for these wars in the first place.
Kyle Bibby: So even if we are successful ultimately in ending our military mission in Afghanistan, as long as these authorizations for use of military force are still in law, we still have, what we believe at Common Defense and I assume at FCNL as well, too easy a route for people to continue to have these endless wars around the world. So that's really what I would certainly say in terms of what should be the next steps, is we need to keep the fight going. We should not rest on our laurels, and we shouldn't become complacent.
Kyle Bibby: And lastly, just in terms of the End The Forever War campaign that we worked on at Common Defense, we first started back in... I believe, 2019 was our first lobbying trip in February. And when we did that...
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Speaking to the power of organizing and just having a good, solid, united message, and a disciplined message at that, we were going there thinking that maybe we would get one or two members of Congress to sign onto our pledge if we were lucky, and by the end of it we ended up with 10.
Kyle Bibby: And moving into that next year, we ended up getting a number of presidential candidates to also sign on to our End The Forever War pledge, including folks like Beto O'Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, a number of them. Andrew Yang. So we've been really proud of the ability to do that, and we could not have done that without working in coalition with organizations like yours. So it's been a long fight. It certainly isn't over.
Kyle Bibby: And yeah, I mean, that's really about it in terms of Common Defense. That's our place and space. So I guess I can open it up now a bit to questions. Shoshana, if you wanted to field some of those. I see some popping up in the chat already.
Shoshana Abrams: Yeah. So I'm going to actually some of the questions for Heather to answer during her portion as well, some of the more nuanced questions about the policy of leaving Afghanistan. But we have some great questions also about your organizing work. So Dave Minden asked, "Who are your members? Are they all veterans? Do you ally with other veterans groups against forever war?"
Kyle Bibby: Yes. So all of our... Well, not every single one of our members is a veteran. We have made, in certain cases... So there's some times where we've made exceptions. We have some veterans who are... They want to be more involved but for one reason or another they might not be able to, so we certainly allow military family members to join in as well.
Kyle Bibby: One of our most active members is actually the former comptroller of the Army. She was a career civilian in the Army, retired there. So she helps us quite a bit as well. Not everyone is a veteran, but generally our rule of thumb is that yes, we would like most of our members to actually have served or have a DD 214 as it's called, separation papers.
Kyle Bibby: And I'm sorry, what was the second half of the question?
Shoshana Abrams: What your relationship is with other veterans organizations that are working on ending forever war.
Kyle Bibby: Oh, yeah, absolutely. We will work with any group that shares this mission with us. So we've worked with a lot of different other groups on this as well, absolutely.
Shoshana Abrams:
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Dot, I saw your hand raised. Do you want to ask a question?
Dot: Yeah. You just asked my question, but since I have the floor... Just 50 years ago, in May 1971, veterans of the Vietnam War came to the Capitol steps and threw their medals back to the Congress. And that was a very moving and effective action that brought the war home and gave a boost to the anti-war movement. So I just wanted to applaud the veterans, because they have such a powerful moral voice in what they are doing. So thank you.
Kyle Bibby: Thank you for that. Actually, and if I could add, I know that you're mentioning from 50 years ago, there was a similar action that was done by Iraq veterans against the war back during the Iraq war. And a number of the veterans who took part in that ended up being some of the initial founders of Common Defense. So yeah, just a little bit of history.
Kyle Bibby: In fact, we were talking about it a day ago. Shoshana, an hour ago, Jason Heard, who's been on our calls, I think you might have met him on a call once or twice, but he was actually one of the main vets who took place in that, or took part in that back during the Iraq war.
Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Dot. So a couple of questions in the chat. One from Robert Burton: "Do you have any advice for approaching representatives and senators who are supportive of military solutions to conflicts and who are dependent on military contractors?"
Kyle Bibby: Yeah. Yeah. Again, it can certainly... It's tough, right? We should acknowledge that... We can certainly have a long discussion about the military industrial complex, how powerful it is and this and that, but I think it's also real for us to acknowledge that the military employs people, and there are real jobs tied to that industry, right? And to folks who are building ships in Mississippi, or Georgia, or wherever it may be, I'm sure that their job is incredibly important to them, and that Rep wants to protect that job as well.
Kyle Bibby: So from our experience, the best way that we make an impact is always through personal narratives, and still just driving home the point that this is bigger than power politics or geopolitics and this and that, that there's a very real human element that occurs in these wars.
Kyle Bibby: One thing that I talk about quite frequently is that as veterans we talk about the suicide problem that exists for a lot of veterans that return from war. This does not occur within a vacuum. Veterans are not necessarily having such a high incidence rates of suicide because the job is just stressful, it's because we have now gone into a 20-year cycle of continuous war.
Kyle Bibby:
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And I think it's something that really does resonate a bit when people are reminded that when they're sending troops overseas, it isn't just a dangerous job and then they come back, wipe the sweat off their forehead and everything's fine. We'll carry those stories and experiences for the rest of our lives, and to a certain extent, those experiences can be deeply traumatic if you're not seriously injured for the rest of your life.
Kyle Bibby: So from what we've found is when we can bring it to the members in that way and remind them of the very real human element here... As well as the communities. I wrote an op-ed recently where I said we often forget that I volunteered to join the Marine Corps. I spent a deployment in Afghanistan, and when my deployment was over, I went back to New Jersey to my family. And I did not have to stay in the war zone like the people who live there, who have to still deal with the next unit who comes in, who have to deal with the bombs and the bullets continuously.
Kyle Bibby: So again, I would say... There are real economic concerns, absolutely. There's jobs tied to the war, there's a real need for a robust and strong national security, but by reminding these members that there are real lives tied to this and that 20 years of war is arguably unethical, I think then we can make some gains with these reps. And we've seen that across the aisle, Republican or Democrat.
Shoshana Abrams: Thank you, Kyle. I know a lot of folks really appreciate that advice. I actually just saw a question come through the chat from Joey in New Orleans who says, "What would be an argument that a member of Congress might hear from a veteran who doesn't agree with repealing the AUMF?"
Kyle Bibby: I got to be honest, I don't really know of one. And the reason why is... I mean, it's not just because we go in and we're ready to fight to get rid of it, but the truth is that the majority of veterans that I have met with, they either... The AUMF itself is completely transparent to them. They have no idea what it is, so they don't necessarily have a particular opinion on it. Or, when they do find out what it is, generally, from my experience, veterans are very adverse to any sort of law that is essentially kind of an open book, open contract towards war in any place.
Kyle Bibby: But I would say for folks who maybe do want to argue for it, I imagine it would probably be a general sort of national security claim that until the great they, whoever they are, determines that the situation or the conditions have been set properly, we don't know whether or not we'll need to go in or out, and we should just keep the legal justification.
Kyle Bibby: But having easy access to a war zone... I mean, we're not talking about you're grabbing something out of your car and you're leaving your front door unlocked. This is a war. We should actually be very judicious about how we're making these decisions. So we always argue that an AUMF that's that broadly worded without certain conditions is not a good thing for this country, and certainly not for national security.
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Speaker 4: Do you differentiate between your group and pacifists?
Kyle Bibby: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Are you a pacifist?
Kyle Bibby: I'm not actually a pacifist, no. I was a Marine infantryman, so I mean... Not that there aren't some Marine infantrymen who become pacifists, but I don't necessarily not... Well, I don't know. There's a long philosophical discussion to be had around what violence is or not based off of self-defense and this and that, but I certainly believe in a right to self-defense and such, so I'm not necessarily anti-military. Or not at all.
Shoshana Abrams: But I think what the large coalitions of organizers and organizations that have been a part of ending the endless war campaign really shows is that we can come from a multitude of perspectives and really work together around this common goal. So I think that's really important.
Shoshana Abrams: Kyle, I wanted to ask, and I know you probably talked to some of the policy folks at Common Defense in prep for this call... We're getting a lot of questions in the chat so I don't want to completely evade them. So there are a lot of questions in the chat that say that we're not actually leaving Afghanistan in terms of bombing and what operations will continue. How does Common Defense look at that issue? What's the pushback that you all are organizing around now?
Kyle Bibby: So to be clear, our actual understanding of this situation is that major combat operations are going to end. So any sort of presence that would allow us for... And this gets into a lot of larger level strategic... Like staging of bases and capacity and stuff. But our understanding is that there will not actually be a sustained military presence in Afghanistan, that we will not be continuing bombing campaigns, that we will not be continuing any sort of robust or continued sort of special operations raids.
Kyle Bibby: Do I think that there is a possibility that special operations raids or airstrikes can occur in the future if the Biden administration for one reason or another thinks that there is a reason for it? I do. But I do think that if we're being quite honest based on how the AUMF has been worded, the 2001 AUMF has been worded, they already have legal carte blanche to do that anywhere in the world regardless, so it's a bit of a different situation.
Kyle Bibby:
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But our actual understanding of the situation is that the military will be ending major, or not even just major but the totality of normalized combat operations within the country. And we certainly support that.
Kyle Bibby: But also, again, we have to continue this effort to support that decision, because a couple of bad news cycles, some pressure from the wrong organizations, and the next thing you know that could become, with an asterisk next to it, "Oh, we're actually going to keep a couple of desks of special operators. We're going to keep a small air wing to supplement them." And the next thing you know we just have a silent forever war that is maintained through administrative loopholes and how they count military members.
Shoshana Abrams: Okay. Thank you. So Kyle, we're about wrapped up, but I wondered if... Someone put in the chat, and I think it would be great if you're willing, to tell your story of how you went from being a combat veteran to working for Common Defense to end war. I know that's asking you to open up personally, so you don't need to, but-
Kyle Bibby: Yeah, no, that's fine. Yeah. I don't mind at all. I'll do that and I'll give a very brief... I forgot to talk about the media thing that you asked me about Shoshana, so I'll do that as well.
Kyle Bibby: So my story, I was a young guy in New Jersey, 15 years old when 9/11 happened, and quite frankly I was terrified when it happened. And New Jersey's very close to New York City, a lot of people from my town commuted in on 9/11 for work. And it was kind of a terrifying time, I think, for everyone. And my way of dealing with that trauma is I went to the Naval Academy and chose to join the Marine Corps.
Kyle Bibby: And while in the Marines, I did one warship tour, which was when they say, "Go see the world in the military," that's what I got. It was way cooler than going into Afghanistan. We just went to Thailand, Hawaii, all these other big places. And then my second deployment was Afghanistan.
Kyle Bibby: And it was there that I really... I was actually there when the raid occurred that killed Osama Bin Laden, and it was a real... Not there in the raid, there in Afghanistan. So I was in country with a group of Marines when that occurred. And our initial thought was, "Oh, great, so I guess it's over then. We'll be leaving." That was in 2010. Excuse me, 2011. So we're 10 years removed now from this decision.
Kyle Bibby: And the longer that the war went on, the more I started to question why we were there, including the time that I spent working in the Obama administration and seeing how the budget was built and how much money went towards the wars rather than towards our communities. And also my work in re- entry helping the formerly incarcerated who oftentimes they walk out of prison and they're homeless.
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They literally cannot get a place to stay. And we have billions of dollars for these wars that I felt went on too long. So that's when I got involved with Common Defense.
Kyle Bibby: And if I could just add one more thing, Shoshana, I do want to give everyone a bit of a warning, the media... I don't think that this is purposeful, I'm not one of those people who thinks that there's some broader mainstream media conspiracy specifically to keep the war going because the editors love war. But I do want to give people a warning in the sense that when I was in Afghanistan, and I didn't realize this at the time as a young commander, when the press came to my patrol base, I was told that I am supposed to take them to every school that I can take them to, take them to every well that I can take them to, and take them to every positive story that I could make for them.
Kyle Bibby: And at the time, I took that on as winning hearts and minds and doing the right thing. What I realized later is that we were not necessarily being fully truthful about what was taking place. In war zones, people die and people are injured and people are traumatized. And what Shoshana was talking about was an ABC News report where they interviewed me about my experiences. They cut it down significantly more than I would have liked, and I spoke up about that on Twitter. And they called me back to apologize.
Kyle Bibby: And my main point was that in the way in which the news covers Afghanistan, they've covered it as: we were there building schools and we were there helping women get women's rights and all of that. And certainly these things occurred, but I can promise you, the Marine Corps, that's not our job. The Marine Corps' job is combat. And anything we do outside of that is secondary or just a extra duty. And it only happens after we've done some level of combat.
Kyle Bibby: So when the media covers it as Afghanistan ending is a loss for the schools and a loss for women's rights, we need to acknowledge that there's a massive part of that story that is not being told, because every single day that that war went on, coordinates was being dropped, doors were being kicked in, people being snatched up, and people were being shot and killed.
Shoshana Abrams: Well, thank you for sharing that Kyle. I thought that was a really important message. I'm glad you brought us back to it. Any last thoughts to leave us with before we let you go?
Kyle Bibby: No. I try to stay as solidarity-minded as possible, so I'm so glad to be joined with another group of folks who care about this issue. FCNL, we've been talking about y'all for years at Common Defense and working with y'all a lot, so it's an honor to be on your call. And I'm going to hang out for a little bit, probably with my camera off, but hang out and just listen to what else y'all have going on, so maybe I can take some notes back to my org. So let's make sure we have a big solidarity-based movement here towards justice for all in this country and around the world. So thanks for having me.
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Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful. Thank you Kyle. When Kyle was coming on, I was like, "Yeah, feel free to see how we do it," because I'm going to at one point join one of your organizing calls and see how you do it. So great, thank you so much for joining us, Kyle, and for that wonderful report and your interactions with our teams.
Shoshana Abrams: We are going to have time in just a moment, you're going to hear from Heather and then you'll get her take on Afghanistan and the withdrawal as well. But I'm going to transition us. I want to let you know that nearly 600 of you have been on lobby visits this year. In just the four months of this year, 600 of you have been on lobby visits, and that's been in, I think, 159 lobby visits total. You're doing just incredible work.
Shoshana Abrams: And I wanted to take a moment, because we did this on the last communicator call and it was great to hear some stories, I'd love for you to give one or two lines, if you've done this thing. So I'm going to give you a prompt, and if it applies to you, use the raise hand function on Zoom and just give us a sentence or two about the action that your team took.
Shoshana Abrams: Okay. So if you have collaborated with another team in the Advocacy Teams Network, you can use the raise hand function to tell us what action you collaborated with. I saw Ingrid's hand.
Ingrid: Oh, I didn't know that means I had to speak! I'm sorry. Our state team, or sorry, our state network of advocacy teams has done some lobby visits now, and I actually got to talk one-on-one with three different leaders of veterans organizations in anticipation of working with them too. So that's been really cool.
Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful. Thank you. We'll hear from one more. Let's go with Marjorie Eulin in Asheville. Oh, you have to unmute.
Ingrid: You're muted.
Shoshana Abrams: Yeah.
Marjorie Eulin: Oh, there we go. Similarly, our North Carolina state consortium has worked together to meet with Senator Tillis' representative and Senator Burr yet to come.
Shoshana Abrams:
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Wonderful. Thank you so much, Marjorie. Okay. Everyone, you can use the lower hand button. I see you all. Thank you all for doing that and for volunteering.
Shoshana Abrams: If you got a letter to the editor published, or many letters to the editor published, in the last couple of months after a lot of effort, go ahead and raise your hand. Use the raise hand function on... All right. Tracy, do you want to tell us about it? You'll have to unmute first.
Tracy: Good evening. I'm part of the new St. Petersburg, Florida advocacy group, and several of us have had letters to the editor published on the AUMF. And we've done two lobby visits so far. And we're new, and we're fired up.
Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Tracy. And let's hear from Jane and then we'll move onto our next prompt.
Jane: We've had several letters to the editor published, and we've had two lobby visits with both our senators with large groups from state advocacy teams, so there have been nine or 10 of us on each call, which the senators seemed to appreciate. They get to talk to a lot of people at once, so that's good.
Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful. Thank you. And Jane you're with the Lancaster team, is that right?
Jane: Lancaster, yes.
Shoshana Abrams: Lancaster, Pennsylvania? Okay. Wonderful. All right. Everyone can put your hands down. We're going to do just one more. And way over time, but this is fun.
Shoshana Abrams: So the last one is: if you have set up a lobby visit after a really long time of working to get a lobby visit. So after arduously calling and calling and calling, let's hear some of those. So let's go to Dave Minden first, and then Marjorie, I know you've been working hard, so we can maybe hear that one too. Dave Minden, go ahead.
Dave Minden: Oh, go to someone else. Sorry, I was looking at something else. I missed your question entirely. I apologize.
Shoshana Abrams: No problem. Marjorie, I know you're dying to answer this one. Go ahead.
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Marjorie Eulin: Actually, I'm dying to ask Bob to answer this one. So Bob, unmute yourself and tell your story.
Shoshana Abrams: This is Bob Lackey?
Marjorie Eulin: Bob Lackey. Come on, I saw you on there.
Shoshana Abrams: You're being voluntold, Bob.
Bob Lackey: Yeah, we finally have a meeting coming up with Madison Cawthorn. And it has been so tough. I've worked a couple of months trying to get the attention of his scheduler. But we finally did and we're going to meet with him Monday.
Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful. Thank you. And Cathy and John.
John: Hi. We've probably been two years since we had an opportunity to talk to one of our representatives. Our group spans two House districts. And just I think there were three or four of us who've been kind of alternately pinging the representative's office to try to get a meeting, and finally out of the blue we got one. And we had the meeting, and [inaudible 00:35:29] ways that [inaudible 00:35:34] promised and the [inaudible 00:35:35] representative [inaudible 00:35:37] has not [inaudible 00:35:43], so we're [inaudible 00:35:45] we were before.
Shoshana Abrams: All right. Well, thank you so much. I think you're breaking up a little bit for me, but I don't know if it was just me, but I think we hard the gist of it. Congratulations on getting those visits.
Shoshana Abrams: Everyone, pat yourselves on the back. Even getting the visit, sending the email, knowing how to follow up politely, and keep doing it, keeping the faith, that's the work. Once you get the meeting it's all easy breezy. Doing a lot of that work is really hard, so thank you for staying persistent and getting those lobby visits. If you'd like to put in the chat some of the actions that you're really proud of, go ahead and do so.
Shoshana Abrams: And I'm going to pass things off to Heather and Julia for a policy update.
John: [inaudible 00:36:26].
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Heather: Thank you Shoshana. That was really great for me as well to hear about all of your persistence and all the meetings that you've been getting and the letters to the editor that you've been getting published. We do see your report backs, but it's even better to hear it straight from the horse's mouth as they say.
Heather: So yeah. I know Shoshana mentioned that I can talk about Afghanistan, I think we might leave that to the question and answer section, because we have quite a few updates on 2002 Iraq AUMF repeal efforts, so I wanted to make sure that we get to those.
Heather: So the most notable thing that I wanted to pass on is that we are hearing that this month we are looking at potentially having a floor vote on H.R.256, the bill to repeal the 2002 AUMF in the House. So that is the latest that we have heard that Chairman Meeks wants to sort of be really aggressive on this and get this bill to the floor.
Heather: We have also heard that in the Senate S.J. Res. 10, which is sort of the similar bill, would repeal the 2002 Iraq AUMF and also the 1991 Gulf War AUMF led by Senators Kaine and Young. That is headed for a markup in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee which is the next step before that can actually go to the Senate floor.
Heather: So really exciting news. Potentially some things happening in the next few weeks. And when it comes to the House bill in particular, because that's already gone through its markup, it's already gone through that stage, the number of cosponsors is starting to be locked very soon. So it's really imperative that we get additional cosponsors on that. That would just add to our chances of getting a floor vote.
Heather: But I'm going to pass it over to Julia now to talk a little bit more about that in detail.
Julia: Thanks Heather. It's great to see y'all's faces tonight. Very excited to update you a little bit more on AUMF repeal in Congress right now. So in the House we, of course, have Representative Barbara Lee's 2002 Iraq AUMF repeal bill, H.R.256 as Heather mentioned, which has actually garnered 15 more cosponsors since we last spoke on our April national call, bringing the total number of cosponsors to 127. Very exciting.
Julia: In the Senate, there are 14 cosponsors on Senators Tim Kaine and Todd Young's 2002 AUMF repeal bill, S.J. Res. 10, with Patrick Leahy from Vermont joining the bill most recently. But, as Heather mentioned, our focus right now is really on building cosponsors in the House on Representative Lee's bill H.R.256, because as she said, the window of opportunity for adding cosponsors on that bill is closing imminently. So I know y'all have heard this before, but right now is really the final push.
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Julia: We expect, as Heather mentioned, the bill to be brought to a vote on the House floor by the end of the month, which means that those cosponsors could be locked in in the next week or so. So we really want to encourage y'all to lobby your representatives who haven't cosponsored the bill, and then to lobby them again. Do not be afraid to lobby your representative more than once. And as always, we are so appreciative of your persistence in this effort. And I will hand it back to Heather with that.
Heather: Thank you so much, Julia. So yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about sort of the approach that you can make when it comes to both the Senate and the House side. So when it comes to the Senate, we really need to get more Republicans on that bill. So as Julia mentioned, we have five right now. We really want to get to 10, because then we know that if we get all of the Democrats and we have 10 Republican cosponsors then they can beat the filibuster and actually pass this bill out of the Senate.
Heather: So there's sort of a tiered approach that I wanted to talk to you all about when it comes to your efforts with your senators and your representatives. So if you have Democratic senators who have already cosponsored S.J. Res. 10, then really focus on the House. Focus on getting your representative to cosponsor H.R.256 if they haven't yet. Try and get a meeting. That's proving difficult, make a call, send an email. There are many ways to get in touch with them. That's probably the tier approach I would take: meeting, call, email.
Heather: If your representative has already cosponsored H.R.256, then still reach out as Julia was saying, thank them, and ask them to reach out to their colleagues who haven't yet cosponsored and encourage them to join. So even if you have got your representative to cosponsor the bill, there is still more that they can do to build cosponsors for it. And it's always nice to be able to go to them and thank them for something.
Heather: Now, back to the Senate. If you have a Republican senator who has cosponsored the bill, so if you are one of those lucky people with those five Republican senators who have already cosponsored, then reach out to them, thank them for this, and then also ask them to reach out to their fellow Republicans and encourage them to join the bill.
Heather: And then for other senators who have already cosponsored the bill, so for the Democratic senators who have already cosponsored the bill, you could also ask them to reach out to Senator Menendez, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Now, Senator Menendez has already said that he wants to take up this bill, he wants to mark it up in his committee sooner rather than later. That is at court. But talk is cheap. And so we really need you to sort of make that push to make sure that the Senator does take up this bill, that he does advance it through his committee.
Heather:
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So if you already have senators who cosponsored the bill, that's something else they can do. They can reach out to Senator Menendez's office and say, "Hey, we've cosponsored this bill, we think it's really important, we want you to bring it up for a markup in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee."
Heather: Of course, if you have a Republican senator who hasn't yet cosponsored, absolutely we definitely want you to reach out to them and ask them to cosponsor, even if you've already done so. FCNL is really big on the power of persistence. We heard from Mark Iozi on the last call how important it is to follow up. So please, if you have Republican senators, reach out to them again and see if they can cosponsor the bill.
Heather: And then, yes, again, if you only have Democratic senators in your state, you can certainly still make the ask if they cosponsor, but really push that we want them to bring along a Republican friend. We don't just want numbers. In the House, we're at the point now where we want the numbers. In the Senate, it's kind of a quality over quantity type thing that is happening right now. So yeah, so if you have Democrats there, really encourage them to reach out to their Republican colleagues.
Heather: Because even if they can't end up cosponsoring, it's an opportunity to educate these Republicans about this law and why it needs to be repealed. We don't see this as a partisan issue. I've talked about how the Heritage Foundation supports repealing the 2002 AUMF, so having Democratic senators reach out to their Republican colleagues to pass that on is certainly going to be helpful.
Heather: So now, just before I throw it back to Shoshana and we go to questions, I have a little bit of a sort of personal update, which I could maybe show you. So I am fairly pregnant right now, and this is unfortunately my last advocacy teams national call before I go on maternity leave. So I wanted to just let you know again how thrilled I have been to work with you all. I will be back in December, so I expect the 2002 AUMF to have been repealed by then, and we can jump on 2001 together.
Heather: But in the meantime, we are not going to leave things in the lurch at all. Obviously, you have the wonderful Shoshana who's going to shepherd everything through, but as far as the lobbying goes, Julia, our wonderful program assistant who you've been hearing from for a while has agreed to stay on with FCNL until the end of the year.
Heather: We also have someone coming in to replace me on a part-time basis. Many of you might already know her, her name is Elizabeth Beavers. She actually sort of had my position I think in 2013 and 2014. She has worked on this very issue. She actually replaced me when I went on maternity leave last time. She will be coming back. She is wonderful. She will be giving you updates and making sure that you have all the support that you need to continue the wonderful work that you have been doing. So thank you all, and I look forward to your questions.
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Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful. Thank you, Heather. There are amazing messages in the chat. I hope you can read them. I'll send them to you after the call if you can't read them now since you're up for answering questions, and we have many.
Shoshana Abrams: So there are a couple of questions in the chat... We'll get to the Afghanistan questions, I promise. I won't leave them out. But first, I would love to hear... So David Ross from Kennett Square, and also a couple of other people in the chat, wrote, "If it's definitely coming up for a vote, why do we need more cosponsors?" So can you speak a little bit more about the House bill and why we need more cosponsors?
Heather: If I said the word definitely, then that was an error on my part. We have heard it is very likely coming up for a vote. We have heard that Chairman Meeks wants to be very aggressive on this, but he is not the decision-maker. It's House leadership, it's Leader Pelosi, it's Leader Hoyer who make that final decision. So until we have a date for a floor vote, we don't have anything. So it's still certainly very much incumbent upon us to build the number of cosponsors to make sure that Leader Hoyer and Leader Pelosi, and Speaker Pelosi, I should say, sorry, know how much support there is for a floor vote for this.
Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful. Thank you. Okay. So just some Afghanistan questions, and I'll also ask, if you have other questions for Heather, go ahead and pop them in the chat and we'll ask no questions about personal, I think there's been enough of those. But if you have any questions about the bill, go ahead and put those questions in the chat.
Shoshana Abrams: So Dianne Butterfield asked earlier in this meeting, "Question from Colorado, what is the thinking about how women and girls will be safe from the Taliban during the transition of power in Afghanistan?" And she asks, "Will village elders move to protect them?"
Heather: Yeah. This is a really difficult question, and a really difficult issue. And FCNL has always pushed for the responsible withdrawal from Afghanistan, where we say we want the troops to come out, but we know that that is only one part of things. And it is certainly not going to end the war or bring us peace. So we have really been pushing for the inclusion of women's rights and the prioritization of the rights of women and girls to be a key element in the negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government and the US sort of role in all of that. So that's certainly something that we have been pushing for.
Heather: I'm not sure exactly how the mechanics of that could work in terms of elders coming in to support or anything like that, but it's certainly a concern for us. And under the prior administration, we could not get a commitment out of the Afghanistan envoy that they would prioritize the rights of women and girls. We are getting more of that with this administration. But really ramped up bilateral and multilateral
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diplomacy, and really getting the US very involved in the peace negotiations is a critical element to helping to protect the rights of women and girls.
Julia: If I might add to that briefly, I've been hearing a lot about this issue, I think we all have, and it's something that is so critically important in moving forward after troop withdrawal in Afghanistan. And something that I found really helpful in thinking about this question was a recent report from the Special Inspector General on Afghanistan Reconstruction, SIGAR. They do a lot of great reports, I'd be happy to share it in the chat.
Julia: But conditional assistance is really the US government's best tool for ensuring that Afghan women and girls' rights are protected as they are enshrined in the 2004 constitution. So there's a lot of discussion around maintaining those rights as enshrined in the constitution, but really conditioning US assistance to the country, which is critical to the sustainability of the Afghan government, they depend greatly on foreign assistance, not just US assistance, but from many international donors, making sure that we're conditioning that aid on human rights standards is really important.
Shoshana Abrams: Thank you, Julia. Thank you, Heather. So I'm not seeing any other questions in the chat about the ask for the month, which gives me a little concern, because it's actually a little complicated, the Senate strategy, Heather, that you just laid out for us. So can you give us the top line of what we're trying to accomplish with the bill S.J. Res. 10.
Heather: Sure. So the top line for S.J. Res. 10 is we want to build Republican cosponsors. That is really the top line there. So I mentioned there are different ways to do that. Obviously, if you have Republican senators, reach out to them. If you have Democratic senators who've already cosponsored the bill, reach out to them, thank them, ask them to talk to their Republican colleagues.
Heather: Even if you have Democratic senators who haven't yet cosponsored the bill, go and talk to them about it, but really emphasize that you want them to talk to their Republican colleagues, and urge them to also join the bill. So that's sort of the top line: Republican cosponsors is what we're really going for right now.
Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful. Thank you. So Terry Link from Lansing put in the chat, "Kyle urged that we need to seize the narrative. How can FCNL help us seize the narrative on reducing militarism, not just with AUMF repeal?"
Heather: That's a really good question, and it really sort of pulls on the fact that AUMF is only one part of the problem. I think that a really powerful thing to raise is just how harmful this war-based military-first approach has been over the last 20 years. I've talked about the statistics in the past, and we can get more information to you, it's largely drawn from the Brown Costs of War Project. But these wars in the
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last 20 years have killed 800,000 people, 335,000 have been civilians, over 7,000 have been US service members, and then over 8,000 have been US contractors.
Heather: This is not just a symptom of the wars that we're in combat in, but it's this overall approach to the problem of terrorism and attacking it, no pun intended, with the military first instead of using all of the other non-military tools that are traditionally used in counter-terrorism.
Heather: So I think to raise those statistics just about how damaging these wars have really been, and we're really no safer than we were 20 years ago. There are more extremist groups around the globe than there were on 9/11. And you just have to look no further than Afghanistan to see there is no military solution to this problem.
Heather: So I think raising those statistics, talking about how there is no military solution to this problem is a helpful way to talk about this issue.
Shoshana Abrams: Thank you, Heather. There are a couple of quick questions in the chat, or what I think might be quick, but maybe they're not. So Joey Hartman-Dow says, "Since our lobby visit two months ago, I followed up every one or two weeks and gotten a response that he's still considering from the staffer. How do I push him over the edge?" And this is Senator Cassidy.
Heather: That's a great question. I'm wondering if it might be time to start making phone calls. That's kind of a good way to be able to literally get in someone's ear. It's easy for them to sort of type a response into an email, but with a phone call it can be a little trickier. It's more immediate. When they hear you, they'll see that they're talking to a real person who is a constituent, and it could be a way to push him more.
Heather: As well, we have action alerts on our website that you might want to sort of, if you haven't already sent one of those, send those. Get friends and family members as well to start sending those, because if they see a higher volume of asks coming in on this issue, then that could sort of make them see, "Oh, you know what? This is really something that a lot of our constituents are contacting us about." They might be more willing to do the meeting with you.
Heather: But thank you very much for your persistence. I know it can be challenging. We are incredibly grateful for you continuing to push like this.
Shoshana Abrams: I would also say that's a great opportunity to get more people in your community to do this outreach too, right? That's a volume problem. If they hear more of it from their community, they might be more likely just to make the moves on it.
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Shoshana Abrams: So if your member... So this is from Dave Minden in Madison, Wisconsin, "Our representative, Senator Ron Johnson, said he's not going to sign on." Or it says, "He is not going to sign on. What to do?" So if that option doesn't really seem like it's on the table, where do you go from there?
Heather: Well, so one thing is that you can just sort of put him to the side and focus on the House. So if you're House of Representatives member has not yet cosponsored H.R.256, put all of your effort into making that happen. Again, if they have, you can reach out again and ask them to talk to their colleagues about also joining the bill. So that's one way to sort of approach sort of a different target, but still very much help with this effort.
Heather: You could also, if you've already met with your other senator, Senator Baldwin, just sort of put more of your attention onto her, encourage her to even talk to Senator Johnson on this. I think when you have colleagues talking to each other like that, it can have a different impact than when we have constituents. So she can potentially reach out to Senator Johnson. That could be just another way of trying to approach things.
Heather: You are going to get pushback from senators. Even sometimes Democratic senators don't want to cosponsor these bills. I think that it's really important that they continue to hear from you. But I think there are other options where you can sort of direct more of your energy where you might have a bit more of a positive response for this month's action.
Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful. I also wanted to say turning to the media when you're not getting through in your lobby visits is also a really important way to do that. You can uplift that you were given a meeting, thank the member for the meeting itself, asking them to take the action again. You can get your community to write letters if they're not so inclined to lobby. There's a lot of different ways that you can kind of engage with the media to make a bigger splash as well.
Shoshana Abrams: So I want to thank Heather and Julia for your updates tonight. Heather, I'm going to miss you on these calls so much. I know we're in great hands with our plan with Elizabeth and Julia, but we are always going to miss you so much. I feel like we're very good... Advocacy teams are very good luck for your family. And we'll work really, really hard to repeal the 2002 AUMF while you're on maternity leave.
Shoshana Abrams: Any last thoughts you want to leave the teams with?
Heather: I just want to say thank you. Thank you, Shoshana. Thank you to all our wonderful teams. It's just such a joy to be able to work with you, to see your lovely reports come in. I appreciate your work so much. I feel you're in great hands with Julia and Elizabeth. I'm very excited to continue to see your efforts
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throughout the year. Yeah. And yeah, just very grateful and look forward to seeing what you can achieve.
Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful. Well, we have just another couple of announcements before we close out, and then we'll open up the line so you can all say your messages to Heather. So just one more announcement, a bit of a sad announcement for us: Theo Sitther is wrapping up his time with FCNL.
Shoshana Abrams: I think he's been with FCNL for about seven years, first five years as a lobbyist on our peace-building team, and then almost two years that we were able to keep him working with the Advocacy Teams program. He has been a huge asset to all of us, to our network. He's been instrumental in helping us grow the statewide organizing that you all are doing around the country. He has crafted resources and trainings for our teams. And he's been doing so much outreach to you all to help make sure that you have what you need to continue doing this important work.
Shoshana Abrams: We're really grateful for the time he spent with us. Theo is now a Senior Fellow at the Alliance for Peacebuilding, and he has been focusing on domestic peacebuilding efforts, something that is very much needed at this time. So sad to see him go, but also really excited for his journey, and wish him all the best. Theo, anything you want to say to the teams as you head off?
Theo Sitther: Thank you, Shoshana. You warned me that you were going to call on me, I guess. No, I just wanted to say after all these years of working for FCNL, first in the Washington office and then now being so intimately connected with the FCNL network, has been such a joy and such a pleasure. And I'm continually amazed by the work that you all do, the lobbying that you do, and the impact that you all have in actually moving policy and moving legislation on the hill. So I am excited to kind of continue to kind of watch the growth of this program, and thank you all for the work that you do.
Shoshana Abrams: Wonderful. Thank you, Theo. So just a couple dates and then I'm going to open up the line.
Theo Sitther: [crosstalk 01:00:20].
Shoshana Abrams: Our May communicator calls are on the 13th and the 27th. Our May new member training call is on the 25th. And then our June national call will be on the 2nd. Thank you all so much for the work that you're going to do in the month ahead. And goodnight. Feel free to unmute and say any messages that you have.
Group: Thank you, Heather. Thank you, Theo. Thank you, Heather. Thank you, Theo. Thank you, Heather. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you, Heather. Thank you, Theo. Bye everyone. Thanks everyone.
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[crosstalk 01:00:49]. Goodnight. Thank you. [crosstalk 01:00:53]. Thank you. Thank you so much. [crosstalk 01:01:00]. Thank you so much.
Shoshana Abrams: Thank you all.
Group: Thank you. Thank you, Heather. Goodnight. Goodnight. Goodnight. Thanks. Good night.
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