Hey all you progressives!
I've been a member here at Daily Kos for quite some time. I've been reading diaries and getting indignant. I've been reading comments and laughing (or getting even more indignant.) But I've never written a diary before, and I feel like the time is write for me to do so.
You see, all this time I've been angry about the state of the country and the direction that it has been going, all this time that I've looked at the garbage that comes out Republicans mouths about the everyday people in this country and felt astonished that someone could stoop that low, all this time that I've been continually surprised at how much lower they've stooped - all this time I didn't take any action to make things better.
So I've decided to chronicle my journey into political action. Hopefully this will be interesting to some people, if not that's ok too. My goal here is to make myself keep pushing forward, help inspire others to take action, and hopefully get some tips from my fellow Kossacks about what I'm doing wrong.
So if you've got words of support, that's great (more than great, STROKE MY EGO!!!)
But more importantly, if you think that I'm not going at something quite right, or have insight into how local government works that I might not, then please let me know.
Anyway, below the fold I'll talk about some of the stuff that I did this past week.
Rally at the Capitol
Monday morning I got an email from Daily Kos asking me to attend a rally for gun control in the St. Paul Capitol building Rotunda. Now, I work approximately a 20 minute walk from the Capitol, so in order to seem not lazy to the being that lives inside my brain bone I finally decided to go and participate in the democratic (small d) process. To be honest, I was very nervous going... I didn't know what it was going to be like, whether there would be 10 people, 50 people, 500 people, or what. Luckily it was around 400 which was a pretty good turn out for a cold St. Paul day when many people were working.
Oh yeah, and I had a blast.
There's me in the upper left hand corner looking very dapper in my white collared shirt and black coat...
Anyway, it was exciting and invigorating, Rabbi Michael Latz who spoke was the most engaging speaker (surprise, surprise... every time I hear a Rabbi speak it's fantastic - if only I wasn't dedicated to the glory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster)
After the rally, though I was nervous I spoke to Heather Martens the director of Protect Minnesota and offered to help as I could (I work with databases as a profession, so I do have some technical skills to offer). I gave her my email and I hope she gets in touch with me soon.
Visiting the DFL
For those of you that aren't aware, in Minnesota the Democratic Party is actually called the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, so we call it the DFL. For a bit of a history lesson, it was formed in a merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties in 1944 involving none other than... Hubert Humphrey!
Anyway, I swung by the DFL state headquarters Tuesday (also about a 5 minute drive from where I work... I really have no excuse to not be involved :P). I spoke to the outreach coordinator Mona Langston gave her my email and got the email contacts for the 53rd State Senate District and the 6th Congressional District (in which I live). For those of you who are properly practicing your 5 minutes of hate, yes I do live in the Congressional District represented by Michelle "Icepick Eyes" Bachmann. Hopefully in less than two years we can change that.
So I contacted the two districts on Friday and offered to help any way that I can. Hopefully I hear back soon.
Judiciary Committee Hearings
I built up enough hours earlier in the week that I was able to take off Friday afternoon to attend the Minnesota State Senate hearings on several gun control measures that they are looking into passing. I was very happy to have the opportunity to speak on behalf of a bill attempting to improve background checks and restrictions on transfer of firearms, during the public comment portion of that bill's deliberation.
Here's what I said:
My name is Russ Manning, and I am a veteran. I joined the UNited States Army in May of 2001, which as I'm sure you all remember was soon to be a rather turbulent time for the Armed Forces. But I served and I served gladly - and I know firsthand the power of firearms. But I'm not here to talk about weapons in the military, I'm here to talk about those very same weapons in our homes.
My father is a careful man, a meticulous man; my mother would probably say overly meticulous. When I was a child he built an addition to our home by imself, and it took him upwards of 5 years to finish it. My mother was not happy. My father is also a gun owner. He had at the time between 8 and 10 weapons of various types: pistols, rifles, and shotguns, and I'm sure he has more now that everyone is out of the house.
One day, my father was working on his guns, when he accidently discharged a round upwards, through the ceiling of the basement, through the floor of the sun room that he built with his own hands and no more than 6 feet from where I as an eight year old was laying, watching television.
Guns do not make your homes safer, they simply do not - to believe otherwise is to fly in the face of evidence. Statistics show that gun owners and their families are not only more likely, but far more likely to be victims of accidental or intentional shooting death at the hands of themselves or others in their family, than they are to successfully defend their home from an armed intruder.
We can't prevent people like my father from making the choice to put his family at risk. But what we can do is make sure that people who shouldn't be allowed to own guns - felons, people with certain types of mental illness - are not ever allowed to get these guns through legal means. Will it be 100% effective? No, nothing will be 100% effective; but we have reached a point of crisis in our country and doing nothing is no longer an option. Enough is enough, it's time to start reading the entirety of the second amendment, and not just the part that suits one side.
The hearing was a little dry at times, as I imagine that Senate hearings must get, but overall I was very impressed and inspired. I sent a thank you email to the committee chairman, Senator Ron Latz, as I was honored to have the chance to speak and was very impressed with his manner and demeanor.
I'll leave you with a quote from him - after a discussion with a Republican Senator who basically argued that the Second Amendment should be held above some other constitutional rights because people felt very passionate about it, he said this:
Senator Ortman, we do not base our constitutional rights on passion, or we would live in a very different country.
I felt it was a pretty awesome take down, and a line that I'm going to keep in my back pocket for sure.
Anyway I'm going to put out this series of diaries every Sunday at noon, thanks for reading!