Priorities

The first pass write-up of our Meeting's FCNL rep after we held a session to envision priorities for FCNL in the upcoming Congress:

1 April 2012 (We are NOT joking--RW)

Eleven Friends from the University Friends Meeting in Seattle met after the rise of meeting for worship to discern priorities for FCNL to pursue during the 113th Congress. Friends discussed many issues challenging our country today. The group shared the sentiment that we are in a time of cultural change. In light of national and international movements, Friends felt that FCNL should focus more broadly on the strategic value of its actions and consider how legislation in the U.S. affects people throughout the world. Friends discerned five legislative priorities of particular importance:

1. *Healthcare for all*.

2. *Immigration reform* with the broad goals of respecting human rights and the value of each person's labor and paying attention to issues of gender equity. These goals could be supported through a path to legalization and citizenship and through demilitarization of the border and of enforcement.

3. *Energy independence*: pursue legislation that removes the U.S. from the conflict over resources by eliminating dependence on fossil fuels and by developing sustainable energy sources.

4. Continue FCNL's support of *Native American rights*.

5. In legislation and in policy, we should*recognize the rights of all people* (throughout the world) as if they were U.S. citizens.



RantWoman appreciated:

--Resounding Unity about the "treat everyone equally item"

--The discussion about corporate personhood and how concepts sich as that get exported with technical assistance and in other packages of ambiguous benefit to other countries. This is the points behind the comments in the opening paragraph.

--Why Native American issues? You mean why are they not covered by equity and honor treaties and demilitarize... and health care for all? How about because FCNL is the only non-Indian lobby that works on these issues.

--Friends' willingness to coblle items from our initial ragged list together into 5 points.


Points important to RantWoman that got buffed away far more than RantWoman is happy about:

--Support financial equality, index Social security thresholds with inflation, impose a financial transaction tax. Ensure that Warren Buffett pays the same tax rate as his secretary. This item SORT OF falls into the treat all people equally item, but RantWoman is a big fan of specificity.

--Foster interdependence and accurate valuation of our ecosphere including figures like "gross national happiness" and a systems of national accounts that values trees for carbon sequestration and control of CO2 not just extraction. RantWoman emphatically concurs with a Friend who spoke about "energy independence." This Friend in Business Meeting called for conservation, curbing overconsumption, not just "energy independence." RantWoman is so There!



A process note: RantWoman MIGHT be so bold as to try to do the brainstorm in one Meeting for Business and then to hammer things into 5 clumps in time for a subsequent one. This time, the report was just presented at Business Meeting. When questions arose it was decided not even to try to wordsmith further in hopes of something that the whole Meeting for Business, or at least Friends crazy enough to stick around after lunch on Easter Sunday could unite about.

Now RantWoman wants to see what rises from everyone else's priorities discernment!