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On Monday, November 18 I started off my day at the office by sitting in with my supervisor and the other member of the department as they discussed plans for the lobby day that our organization will be helping to run in early December.  The lobby day will be held in the state capital, and is intended to encourage the state senators to support SB 75 – the anti-human trafficking bill that we and many other organizations, coalitions, agencies, and individuals have been working on and promoting for the past year. 

The conversation focused less on the logistics of the actual event, and mostly on how we planned to mobilize supporters to attend the lobby day.  The theme that kept arising on that note was that we were less concerned with appealing to individuals in Philadelphia, on the principle that their senators were already largely in support of SB 75 and as such we didn’t want to fatigue those communities with an event where there attendance would not really tip the scale in our favor.  Rather, our efforts should be directed two other ways.  Firstly, we should be focusing our organizational outreach on the other counties we serve, given that the senators for those regions are less homogeneously supportive of SB 75.  Even then, though, our attempts to mobilize support – both for the surrounding counties and Philadelphia – should be saved in part for the spring, when a similar event will be much more necessary to bolster the bill when it gets to the House.  Secondly, as an experienced organization we should dedicate some small amount of time to altering our materials slightly so they can be sent out to smaller organizations that operate in central PA, the senators for which are the most opposed to SB 75; generating representation from those communities at the lobby day is far more crucial to the efficacy of the event than our own.

This concern for conserving not just our own energy, but more importantly the interest and motivation of the communities we work in is a familiar conversation, but one I’ve only encountered in class, and situated in an international context.  For example, “donor fatigue” was a common phrase in my Politics of Humanitarianism class, referenced in relation to the difficulty of inspiring humanitarian action when aid is so frequently called for and need so often demonstrated and used in humanitarian campaigns.  The discussion on Monday, though, was interesting in that it spoke to a different angle: rather than fear of fatiguing donors intended to aid a subject-positioned group, we were cautious about fatiguing the very people we were advocating on behalf of by communicating to them and mobilizing them with too much frequency and energy.  In the face of reality this makes sense – I would think most people are familiar with the dismissal that accompanies frequent pleas for assistance, as well as how updates on the same issue become ignored as regularity becomes banal. 

All the same – and also acknowledging that I absolutely act the same with regard to other issues I care about but am not necessarily involved in – it is ridiculous to realize that we must hold back our advocacy for fear of tiring communities as we work with them to collectively improve a bad situation.  Granted, the involvement is on terms we have set as an organization – we decided that the action would take the form of a lobby day, etc. – but at the same time, it is an effort that many will sympathize with, but if we ask them to help one too many times we will be dismissed, and the cause will suffer.

Also curious to note was when the discussion touched on other supporters of the cause – both from elsewhere in the state, but also within our own coalition.  For one, my supervisor cautioned that we would not be using the event to grow our contact list, as many of the individual supporters coming in from central PA would be religious conservatives, and as such very much opposed to various issues that our organization pursues.  While we may stand with them on the front of anti-human trafficking, we are very much opposed on others.  This decision to not engage these groups is a difficult balance.  On the one hand (and where we have placed ourselves), we don’t want to alienate fellow supporters for this very important cause.  On the other, if we were to engage with them on the full plane of what our organization handles, there is the chance that we could expose them to other positive ideas and causes, and perhaps change their minds. 

A similar balance manifested when discussing other methods for raising awareness for anti-trafficking endeavors.  The coalition we are a part of in pursuit of this issue is financed by one particular organization.  As such, if we were to participate in awareness and fundraising on this front, we would in fact be spending organizational resources on money raising for another organization.  What’s more, this particular organization is anti-choice; so while the funds raised would be in relation to anti-trafficking efforts, it remains that we would be aiding the mission of an organization that in large part is actually contrary to what we stand for and support.  Once again, the dynamics of coalitions among advocacy and community organizations present interesting dilemmas and conflicts of interest, even as we work together.

After this discussion I drafted some basic fodder for our social media in preparation for the lobby day.  When it actually gets posted it will likely be accompanied by images and/or materials that we will create in relation to the event, but I supplied the basic text message that will be put out on Facebook and Twitter.  The various entries were mostly consistent – they referenced the date of the event, its purpose, and most mentioned something about human trafficking itself as an issue in PA.

After this I had a brief throwback to previous weeks, wherein I printed and cut out more SB 75 postcards and continued compiling the spreadsheet of what healthcare plans were offered by county across the state.

Finally, my day ended with attempting to track a bill in the PA House.  An amendment was introduced that afternoon to HB 1603 – a bill related intended to broaden medical staffs’ right to a “conscious objection,” wherein they can refuse to provide various services on the basis of a moral objection.  The amendment would have added abortion to the list of deniable services.  Clearly that is something our organization would be very much opposed to; so I was tasked with attempting to track the status of the bill and the amendment while my supervisor worked to coordinate with other advocates and get the amendment withdrawn. 

The House was in recess for the rest of my time at the office – preventing me from tracking the amendment’s process via a live stream of the floor – and I was unable to even find reference to the amendment elsewhere.  Had I not been told of its existence by my supervisor, I would not have known that such an amendment existed in relation to the bill.  As a citizen, I find this concerning.  Granted, the amendment had only been proposed that day.  Conversely, there was clearly a method by which my supervisor was alerted to it; why could some sort of information then not also be posted somewhere accessible to the average citizen?  Thankfully, the amendment was withdrawn later that night.  My struggles to find any reference to it, though, left me concerned.