After a nice dinner last Monday night with my fellow advocates, I came home to practice my lines and get a good night's sleep before the big day. Since I was out for dinner, Papa Bear had a boys-only pizza party with Lemon and Lime, featuring delivery from Domino's. Lemon outdid himself and reportedly ate two pieces of pizza plus some of a cinnamon stick. I mention this only because it appears that this quantity of grease in one meal is sufficient to destabilize the delicate CF digestive system, which meant that I was up at 1 a.m. dealing with puke and starting laundry. So much for the good night's sleep, but I suppose it served as a good reminder of why I was going to the capitol to advocate.On Tuesday morning I did something I haven't done in years, thanks to working from home--I got up, took a shower, put on professional-looking clothes, and caught a 7:21 bus downtown. After meeting up with the rest of the advocacy team for a quick breakfast, we walked across the street to the capitol building where we split up to go to our meetings. Each meeting had about 3-5 advocates, with a different set of advocates in each one of the meetings. It seemed like the organizers were trying for a mix of viewpoints in each meeting (care provider, family members, an adult patient with CF, etc), and they tried to make sure that each advocate met with his or her own representatives. I met with 8 legislators or their staffers over the course of the day, so it was packed. I had my show-and-tell bag in hand, and my rehearsed talking points in my mind. The meetings were each about 20-30 minutes long, so each of the advocates had time to talk and answer questions from the legislators. The fact that we had different people in each meeting was great, because it made the conversations fresh each time--we didn't know exactly what the other advocates in each meeting were going to say, and we had a chance to learn from each other as well as educate the legislators.
The legislators (or their staffers) that I had scheduled meetings with were Rep Terese Berceau (my state rep), Sen Fred Risser (my state senator), Sen Jon Erpenbach, Sen Alberta Darling, Rep Debra Kolste, and Rep John Nygren. I also had an hour or so break in my schedule, so I sat in on a meeting of the Joint Committee on Finance, which was a good opportunity to see our state government at work. It was sort of fascinating watching the legislators make impassioned speeches about the subject at hand (something to do with Medicaid) even though the room had almost no spectators, and the other legislators who were there didn't even seem to necessarily be listening. I even overheard one of the legislators complaining about "all the political theater." It seems kind of mysterious to me, really. If they aren't performing for an audience (the room was nearly empty) and they aren't actually communicating with each other, what is actually going on? Who is the theater for? The good news, though, was that the legislators kept slipping in and out of the room between votes. The consultant that the CF Foundation had hired to help connect us with legislators was there sitting near me, so when she saw any legislators that she knew step out of the hearing room, she would grab me and make an introduction. So, I got some bonus hallway meetings with Sen Luther Olsen and Sen Leah Vukmir.
I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed the whole day, and how positive I felt after it. Politics
feels very polarized these days, and I had a hard time imagining how I would connect with some of the people on my schedule. I was impressed to find that, to a person, they were warm, friendly, and genuinely interested in what we had to say. They asked thoughtful questions, shared relevant personal experiences, and seemed to really value meeting with us. More than one of them remarked that one of their favorite aspects of their job was the fact that they could learn about such a diverse range of issues every day. This is apparently advocacy season here in Wisconsin, so we were by far not the only people there advocating for a cause that day.
Of course, all the meetings were made easier and more friendly by the fact that we had no specific policy asks this time around. This is not a budget year in Wisconsin (that happens on the odd-numbered years), so the purpose of these meetings was just to introduce ourselves and our cause to the legislators, with the understanding that we will be back next year with some more concrete goals in mind. Still, I felt really encouraged that it might be possible to find common ground even with people of a very different political stripe. It was certainly a great change of pace from calling the exhausted interns at my US senators' offices--even in this age of technology, there is a lot of value to an in-person meeting. I had also forgotten (or maybe never fully realized) how much important policy really is decided at the state level--these days, the national political scene seems to drown out the local, even if you are trying to pay attention.
