2010 RI NOW PAC Endorsements

Here are the Rhode Island National Organization for Women PAC endorsements.

(Please note that all the candidates in this post are 100% on RI NOW's issues in addition to the highlights I'm covering here.)

Campaigns I've been volunteering for :

Betsy Dennigan (National NOW endorsement):
Betsy Dennigan is an emergency nurse and attorney who is running for national office in District 2.  She is an able and worthy candidate and is focusing on healthcare, education, and stimulating the fishing industry and green industries in Rhode Island.  I've written several posts about her on this blog already.

Angel Taveras
 A strong progressive candidate for Providence, Angel is focusing his mayoral platform on housing, which the city certainly needs, and environmental issues, including municipal composting, which  I worked on back in 2008 (cut to terribly-kept old blog) with David Mittelman in congruence with Andy Posner of the Capital Good Fund.  I am sure that Andy will be invested in helping guide Angel through the process of finding sufficient land, finding staff, dealing with the NIMBY'd nature of gentrification within Providence, etc. He also wants to fix zoning laws, which, after having worked for the Census, I can see is a huge problem in the city.  The difference between commercial and residential zoning has really affected cost of living, making rent far too high downtown and turning Providence into a ghost town after business hours.  Providence needs a mayor who will actually help uncover and remove deep-seated problems, and I think Angel's capable of doing so.

Therese Caron
A criminal defense lawyer, Therese is a fighter for justice.  She is an advocate and self-identifies as a feminist.  She is the lesser-known Progressive face in the race for the District 2 Representative seat vacated by David Segal, but she will make up for it by working twice as hard in office.   While I would support either Therese or Chris in office, as I know them both personally, Therese's story especially appealed to me.  She was been a public defender for twelve years, and now works with helping low-income people in difficult situations.  She decided to run for Segal's seat when she found out it was vacated--after he announced it--on the basis that her daughter was in high school and therefore old enough to handle the time commitment that Therese would invest in the Representative position.  Therese is a true Rhode Islander, and I think she would serve her district well in office if elected.

Politicians I've met with or otherwise support:
Chris Blazejewski
Gina Raimondo
Theresa Tanzi

End of April Update

So my life has been fairly insane lately, but I thought I'd update in this brief period when I should be paying attention to my co-ed literary fraternity's poetry meter workshop (they're analyzing the meter of Lady GaGa's Bad Romance, it's pretty epic).

THINGS I HAVE DONE/AM DOING:
- Continue to volunteer for Betsy Dennigan, going to be assigned press releases to write closer to the primary in September.  Tomorrow I'll be representing Betsy at a peace conference in Roger Williams Park's Botanical Gardens (Click on the brochure in the top portion of the page to see details.)  She can't go because she has a different event to attend, but she is a sponsor of the event, so I've been appointed to go in her place.
- Attended escort training for Planned Parenthood, where I will help women pass through crouwds of protesters on scheduled abortion days to get from the parking lot to the building across the street.
- I'm meeting with Carolyn Mark, president of RI NOW, to discuss my being their Political Action Committee intern.  This will involve a lot of lobbying, researching laws, and testifying at bill hearings.
- Been completely inspired by James Forman Jr., who spoke at a Careers in the Common Good informal info session about Public Interest Law at Brown earlier this week.  Hearing his story made me feel far better about my decision to pursue law school, that I won't lose my entire soul or my reasons for attending, and that I can really make a difference one day.  I just need to remind myself why I'm there and avoid the herd.  Basically, I need to find awesome friends at a good school so we can keep each other's morale up against the suits that dominate the field.  I can do that.  I'm doing it at Brown, I did it in high school, and I have faith that I can continue to do so in the future.  I'm going to see if I'll be able to volunteer a few hours a week at the Public Defenders office.  I think that's the best way to get real experience with the law and, as I always strive to do, with ground myself to understand the people that laws not only affect, but should be built around.
- Trying to get back into Brown following my leave.  I'm getting some of my friends to edit the letter I've written, and I already have the letters of recommendation I need done.  I'm pretty excited to go back--leave has been a priceless experience, but I need to graduate.

That's all for now.  Take care.

Updates and a local mindfulness program!

So, I have been doing a LOT of things lately.

I've started volunteering for Betsy Dennigan's campaign.  I've now spoken with her twice, and I feel as though she definitely needs to represent the state of Rhode Island in Congress.  She has really comprehensive plans concerning healthcare, education, stimulating the economy with new jobs and rejuvenating a dying fishing industry.  She is pro-choice, she is an emergency nurse, she has been doing policy for 12 years, and now it is time to send her to Washington, where she can actually effectively implement change and fix this tiny state with high illiteracy and unemployment rates.  The best part about working so closely with her campaign is that I can discuss real policy issues that affect the lives of myself and my friends and have them be addressed one-on-one and can even push them to a place of importance within her campaign on college campuses.  It's also pretty fun to get to march in St. Patrick's Day parades.

Yesterday (Tuesday), I went to the State House with other members of RI NOW to testify in favor of 3 bills that were being heard and against another bill under the House Judiciary Committee.  I couldn't stay the whole time, unfortunately, because they started the hearing far later than I had expected, but it was very interesting to actually sit in on one.  Mostly, I got to speak with some important people on the pro-choice side, including a representative from Planned Parenthood and Susan Sweet.

Other than that, the LSAT studying is still in the works.  Did you know that it costs $136 to register for the LSAT?  And that LSAC asks you not only for your ethnicity and whether you are left- or right-handed, but also for your sexual orientation?  Granted, this is asked through LSAC for the Candidate Referral Service, which finds law schools to recruit you based on your preferences, but I hardly feel that sexual orientation is necessary to inquire of applicants.  Also, they lump all "other" sexualities (read: non-heteronormative; yes, I am a Brown student at heart) in one category.  There is a check box in front of the statement that reads, "Check to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender."  I don't think that who a person loves should determine their ability to be a lawyer, but I suppose my beliefs are relatively progressive compared to the vast majority of the law school admissions population.  When I tried to find more complaints about this requirement online, I could only find this document, "The ABA 2009 Presidential Diversity Summit's State of Diversity in the Legal Profession Selected Survey Summaries."  On page 14, there's a really poignant quote from a female lawyer:

"Diversity is important to the legal profession. In order for laws, statutes, rules, and regulations, to be created and applied, without bias for the rule of law to have proper meaning, our profession must be charged with fully including the vast variety of backgrounds so that bias, prejudice, and
bigotry are minimized, or, at best, eliminated...

... In my professional life, I have seen local bar associations that discriminated based on religion, race, sex, and sexual orientation and gender identity. Some of that has abated through education. Some has abated by those that discriminated knowing someone in the class or status of the discriminated. My local bar still discriminates based on gender identity and sexual orientation (we have the most "liberal" bench and bar in the state, yet the bench of over 30 judges and masters does not have a single representative from that group, though the citizens they judge comprise about 20%.)"

So, all you law schools that claim not to discriminate based on these criteria, I hope you keep your word.  It'll be a heck of a lot easier for qualified candidates to get into these discriminatory bar associations if they can at least get into law school.

 For a complete change of topic, I found a great local mindfulness resource!  The Providence Library is holding a mindfulness program series until May.  This is awesome for the greater Providence area, because it is a really cheap or free way to learn Yoga and about meditation, sleep, even Reiki.  While some Brown students take for granted free meditation and yoga sessions here, if the general public were made aware that Yoga is $5 per person per session, they would be less intimidated by committing to expensive per month or per year yoga programs.  I am going to ask about it the next time I go there (which will hopefully be soon, I definitely need to find a new LSAT study spot) and if they have fliers, I'll take a bunch and distribute around my job on Fed Hill and around Betsy's campaign headquarters on Broad Street.  Using the library as a public resource and center for interaction is a really key part of Betsy's campaign, and I completely agree with that concept.

So, to recap:

• Betsy Dennigan is an awesome Congressional candidate
• LSAT and CRS registration can lead to some upsetting discriminatory practices
• Learn about mindfulness at the Providence Public Library!

Take care.

Update

Here's a quick update on what I'm doing:

• Hard-core LSAT studying has begun.  I'm studying with the PowerScore Logic Games and Logical Reasoning Bibles.  They're pretty comprehensive, but make no mistake, the questions can be really difficult.
• On Friday, I'm meeting with Betsy Dennigan's Volunteer Coordinator so that I can start working on the organization and research for her college outreach initiative.  Basically I need to wrangle all the contact information for every RI college Democratic Club by Friday evening, when I get to meet some important people in her campaign at Headquarters.  I'm pretty excited.
• Sometime this or next week, I'll be meeting with Megan Andelloux, an important Rhode Island Sex Educator, to discuss volunteering at her Sexual Health Resource Center.  She says she knows some lawyers with ideals similar to mine, and if I need a mentor, I can be introduced.  I am super excited about this, and can't wait to be involved hands-on in adult sex ed.
• Tomorrow, I'll be attending the NERCOMP Conference for my job.  If I haven't talked about my job yet, I will in the near future (when it's not 1:30 am), because what my company does is actually really essential to the evolution of education as a whole.
• I also took the exam to work for the census, so I'll be able to supplement my income somewhat with that (thank goodness).

All things considered, self-soothing is still a high priority on my list, because I know how important it is in order to get all of these things accomplished.  Eventually, I hope everyone will have access to these techniques so that calm amidst the storm can be achieved.

Good night, and take care.