RESULTS Campaigns Weekly Update May 4, 2021
Quote of the Week
“The crisis in hunger, homelessness and health care are not impossible to solve, if our representatives work together for the benefit of all.”
– RESULTS Snohomish, WA volunteer Willie Dickerson in a April 20 letter to the editor in the Missoulian
Table of Contents
- Global Poverty Campaigns Update
- U.S. Poverty Campaigns Update
- RESULTS Announcements
- Upcoming Events
- Grassroots Resources
Global Poverty Campaigns Update
IMPORTANT ACTION Take a survey to help strengthen anti-oppression and equity work at RESULTS.
Got Twenty Minutes? Submit our Senate sign-on letters and appropriations requests
First, register for the 2021 RESULTS International Conference (June 12-13). Then, on to Senate appropriations work! We have two Senate appropriations sign-on letters that are open for signatures and have deadlines of May 14. One letter is on maternal/child health and nutrition and the second is on the Global Partnership for Education/basic education. As you may remember, these letters are vital tools for reinforcing the appropriations requests that you all have been making, so we want the signature lists to be robust. Find all the letters on our regularly updated fiscal year 2022 (FY22) appropriations sign-on letter blog post.
And don’t let up on appropriations requests in the Senate. The Senate State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee of Appropriations (SFOPS) leadership doesn’t have a deadline yet to hear from other senators about their development assistance spending priorities for FY22, so we want to stay ahead of the game. Submitting appropriations requests doesn’t have to be tricky. Here are some tips:
- Go to your senator’s website and search for “appropriations.” Many offices have forms and deadlines on their websites. If you find forms, send them to Dorothy Monza ([email protected]) and Crickett Nicovich ([email protected]) along with the deadline for having them filled out. They will fill them out and return them to you to send to the foreign policy aide along with our appropriations request sheets.
- If you don’t find forms on the website, call the foreign policy aide for your senator and ask what the deadline is for submitting SFOPS appropriations requests to their office. Also, ask if they have forms to fill out or if you can just submit our request sheets. If you don’t know who the foreign policy aide is, call the office and ask, or contact the Grassroots Impact staff.
- Follow your call with an e-mail to the foreign policy aide, including any unanswered questions about deadlines and forms, along with our appropriations requests. Explain why these funding levels are important (drawing on the request sheets or laser talks for your explanation).
- Alternate calling and e-mailing until you get a clear response on the procedure for submitting the appropriations requests and find out whether your senator will include our requests in their submission. Remember, if they have forms to fill out, we can help. Send them to Dorothy Monza ([email protected]) and Crickett Nicovich ([email protected]) along with the deadline for having them filled out.
- Please let Lisa Marchal ([email protected]) or Ken Patterson ([email protected]) know if you have questions.
Got Another Fifteen Minutes? Get meetings with your members of Congress
What a celebration as we finished our First 100 Days Campaign! You accomplished lobby meetings with the full Senate and at least 37% of the House . . . and we’re still counting those final meetings. You all have done phenomenal work. Follow up on your congressional meetings so that we can reinforce our appropriations sign-on letters and requests. Don’t forget to report the meetings you held, and don’t forget your thank-you messages. Then consider jumping into getting published on the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). Write your local paper about the need to support GPE’s transformative work in the lives of young people. GPE has spent nearly 20 years helping governments invest in innovative solutions to get all girls and boys in school and learning. GPE now has an ambitious five-year plan to transform education systems in lower-income countries. We must support this plan. Getting published on this issue is a key way to let legislators know about GPE and about what we need to do to support it.
TAKE ACTION: Follow up on your meetings with your legislators to see how/when they acted on your requests, thank them for meeting, and report your meetings via our online form. Then think about pivoting to media and getting published on the Global Partnership for Education (GPE)! Can we get 100 media hits on GPE between now the end of June? Use our action sheet and companion action alert on this topic to help you along.
The Reach Every Mother and Child Act. Just last week, Sens. Collins (R-ME) and Coons (D-DE) introduced the Reach Every Mother and Child Act. Read more about this exciting development via the recently issued press release discussing the legislation and its intention to end preventable mother and child deaths.
House Resolution 225 on GPE. Has your representative cosponsored H.Res.225 in support of the Global Partnership for Education? Check out the cosponsor list and consider contacting your House member if they are not yet on the resolution.
U.S. Poverty Campaigns Update
QUICK ACTION Take the anti-oppression survey today
Got Twenty Minutes? Generate media for a strong economic recovery
Building on the momentum created by your slew of lobby meetings during the 2021 RESULTS First 100 Days Campaign, use local media to generate letters to the editors pushing Congress to prioritize housing and tax provisions in economic recovery legislation. President Biden has called for new investments in housing and tax credits for low-income workers and children, but his proposals don’t go far enough. His plans do not include making rental assistance available to all eligible renters, nor making the increased Child Tax Credit (CTC) amount permanent.
With Congress poised to pass sweeping economic recovery legislation in the coming months, this is our moment. Let’s go for it – 100 letters to the editor on housing or tax issues by the end of June. Your letters can push Congress to dramatically expand rental assistance and ensure workers and children receiving the EITC and CTC stay out of poverty.
TAKE ACTION: Take twenty minutes to submit your own letters to the editor telling Congress to expand rental assistance to all those who need it and to make recent improvements to the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit permanent. Look for local stories about President Biden’s recovery plan, his speech before Congress, the pandemic, or poverty to use as hooks for your letters. The May U.S. Poverty Action has template letters on housing and the EITC/CTC, as well as links to state data you can use to personalize and submit them today. The May National Webinar also has information you can use. Once published, leverage your media by forwarding it to your members of Congress and let RESULTS know about your success.
Got Fifteen Minutes? Follow up from lobby meetings with housing and tax aides
Thank you for your incredible work during our 2021 First 100 Days Campaign. With meetings with all 100 Senate offices and well over 150 meetings with House offices, you have sent a strong message that Congress must make housing and child poverty a priority in economic recovery legislation this year. It’s now time to follow up with the housing and tax aides on the status of your requests. Follow-up is how you keep lawmakers accountable for the promises they made in your meetings. It also keeps the conversation going and sets the stage for your next round of meetings during the RESULTS International Conference.
The next few weeks could be critical as congressional leaders start putting together economic recovery legislation. Please ask the aides now if they have spoken to leadership about including an expansion of rental assistance and making the 2021 EITC and CTC provisions permanent in that legislation.
TAKE ACTION: Take fifteen twenty minutes to follow up from recent lobby meetings by contacting housing and tax aides. Make sure they have our housing and tax lobby leave behinds. If they don’t have an update on your requests, ask when you can follow up again. If you need help, please contact RESULTS staff for assistance. Also, if you’ve had a recent lobby meeting, please complete the RESULTS Lobby Report Form to let us know the details.
QUICK NEWS ON U.S. POVERTY
Housing justice is racial justice. Read the newest RESULTS Blog post from Senior Policy Associate Michael Santos on how ”the lack of access to safe, decent, and affordable housing today reflects and compounds the racial inequities that have plagued this country for centuries.”
Read new hunger blog posts. Read two new hunger-related RESULTS Blog posts from RESULTS Emerson Hunger Fellow Max De Faria. The first post outlines the struggles families still face in putting food on the table. The second post looks at the process for reauthorizing child nutrition programs (school meals, etc.) this year.
Administration works to feed kids this summer. The Biden Administration is working to ensure that low-income children are adequately fed this summer by expanding the Pandemic-EBT program. They will be adding benefits to parent SNAP EBT cards – an average of $375 per child – to match the value of meals children are not receiving at school during the summer months.
Sign your local RESULTS group onto SAVE for All principles. RESULTS is part of the SAVE for All campaign, which works to promote fairness and equality for all. Show your support by adding your local RESULTS group to the list of SAVE signers. Use this form to add your RESULTS group.
New reports analyze revenue provisions in recovery plan. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has a new report on the revenue-raising proposals in the President’s American Families Plan. The report finds that restoring the top personal income tax rate to 39.6 percent and ending capital gains tax breaks for millionaires together “would affect less than one percent of taxpayers nationally.” For additional resources on the President’s revenue proposals, see fact sheets on the American Families Plan and American Jobs Plan from Americans for Tax Fairness.
RESULTS Announcements
We need 54 more survey responses, deadline May 11. We are getting closer to completing our anti-oppression and equity survey collecting feedback from RESULTS volunteers on existing anti-oppression efforts. We currently need 54 more survey responses to get an accurate sample. Again, your input is critical to identifying areas of growth in our anti-oppression work and by completing the survey you will help shape the future of our work. If you have done so, please take the survey today. The new deadline is Tuesday, May 11.
Want to lobby after the International Conference? Deadline extended to May 6! The 2021 RESULTS International Conference, a virtual event June 12-13, will be here in about five weeks. The Conference promises a fabulous agenda with amazing speakers such as Paul Farmer, co-founder and chief strategist for Partners in Health. Our annual lobby effort, in conjunction with the Conference, is a powerful experience in influencing policy and building relationships with your congressional offices. If you plan to lobby during Advocacy Week, please register for the Conference by May 6 (deadline has been extended). This is to ensure that you are included in “lobby prep calls” in this month to help you get ready for Conference lobby meetings (we will contact you soon to set up those state-base calls). Don’t miss our biggest event of the year – register today!
Join discussions on housing and race this week and next. Tomorrow, May 5 at 9:00 pm ET, the RESULTS Grassroots Anti-Oppression Working Group will host a follow-up conversation on The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. The focus will be the final four chapters of the book. Register for the May 5 webinar here. Then, next week on May 13 at 8:00 pm ET, the RESULTS St. Louis (U.S. Poverty) group will host a discussion with Ben Austen, author of High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and Fate of American Public Housing. Register for the May 13 webinar today.
Join our spring peer-to-peer fundraising starting May 10. Building on the success of the First 100 Days Campaign, we are launching the annual spring peer-to-peer fundraiser which will be a chance to raise critical funds for the next phase of our campaign work. The online campaign will run May 10-21. We’re very excited to share that in recognition of RESULTS and RESULTS volunteers’ work around tuberculosis, a generous donor has offered to match the first $5000 raised during the campaign. More information coming soon at https://results.org/donate/fundraise/ or contact Mea Geizhals with questions.
Upcoming Events
Congressional schedule. The House is in DC this week; the Senate is on recess. Submit your remote meeting requests today.
Wednesday, May 5: Second book discussion on The Color of Law, 9:00 pm ET. Focus will be on the final four chapters. Register today. Registration ends one hour prior to the webinar.
Thursday, May 13: Discussion of High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and Fate of American Public Housing, 8:00 pm ET. Guest: author Ben Austen. This event is hosted by RESULTS St. Louis (U.S. Poverty). Register here.
Thursday, May 13: Quarterly Call-in with Grassroots Board Members, 9:00 pm ET. Join at https://tinyurl.com/QuarterlyGR. You can also dial in to (929) 436-2866, meeting ID 96338593060, passcode 1980.
Tuesday, May 18: RESULTS U.S. Poverty Free Agents Webinar, 1 pm or 8 pm ET. Contact Jos Linn at [email protected] for information on how to join.
Wednesday, May 19: Action Network Monthly Webinar, 8:30 pm ET. Register today. Registration ends one hour prior to the webinar.
Thursday, May 20. U.S. Poverty Monthly Policy Forum, 8:00 pm ET. Register today. Focus: answering your questions about on housing and the EITC/CTC. Registration ends one hour prior to the webinar.
Thursday, May 20. Global Poverty Monthly Policy Forum, 9:00 pm ET. Register today. Registration ends one hour prior to the webinar.
Monday, May 24: RESULTS Global Poverty Free Agent Webinar, 7 pm ET. Contact Lisa Marchal at [email protected] for information on how to join.
Wednesday, May 26: Motivational Interviewing Skills for Policy Advocacy, 8 pm ET. Webinar will run 90 minutes. Register today. Registration ends one hour prior to the webinar.
Saturday, June 5: RESULTS National Webinar, 1:00 pm ET. Register today. Registration ends one hour prior to the webinar.
Saturday June 12 and Sunday, June 13: 2021 RESULTS International Conference. Registration is open. Please register by May 6 (deadline extended) to participate in Advocacy Week following the conference.
Grassroots Resources
Learn about the RESULTS Experts on Poverty.
To update volunteer info (e.g., subscribe to the Weekly Update or action alerts, add new advocate information, update an existing advocate’s information or preferences), use our Volunteer Information Form.
Find actions and volunteer resources on our Current Volunteers page, including our anti-oppression resources.
Remember to please report your recent advocacy successes in lobby meetings, media, and outreach activities.
To join the RESULTS listserv for more RESULTS conversation, send an email to [email protected]
If you have a question, comment, or suggestion for the RESULTS/REF Board, please e-mail Lindsay Saunders at [email protected]. View Board minutes and Annual Reports.
RESULTS Staff directory and job postings.