Dr. Jillian Todd Weiss has started a Twitter-based campaign for educating Congress:
The plan is this: you join Twitter, a free text messaging service, and then set it to follow our Inclusive_ENDA campaign. You can sign up here, and input “follow inclusive_enda” to follow the progress of our campaign. You will not receive any text messages other than the ones you request, and you can set it to follow only via web if you like.
What you should do:
Step 1 — After you sign up, input “follow inclusive_enda” which will notify us that you’re on board
Step 2 — Call Congress at 202-224-3121, tell them you want to speak to your Congressmember’s office, give them your zip code, and voila! you’re connected.
Step 3 — Tell the receptionist you support the inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, HR 2015, the one that includes gender identity and expression.
Step 4 — Text message Twitter at 40404, and tell us who you called!
Step 5 — Bask in the knowledge that not only you, but thousands of people know that you supported a fairer world for everyone! (And, if we get enough people, we’ll tell Congress, too!)
United ENDA is endorsing The Tammy Baldwin Plan:
Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) announced today that she has secured an agreement from the Democratic leadership to introduce an amendment to H.R. 3685 that would restore gender identity protections to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). The amendment would be considered on the House floor next week, after the bill moves through the House Education and Labor Committee this Thursday. After her announcement, the United ENDA coalition released the following statement:
Two weeks ago, our community was told that gender identity would not be included in any version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Congressional Leadership expected our community to acquiesce. However, United ENDA effectively communicated the strong opposition of hundreds of organizations and millions of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to leadership’s efforts to advance a stripped down version of the bill.
It is because of our unprecedented efforts that new options, such as the proposed amendment by Congresswoman Baldwin, are able to come before Congress. Members of Congress responded to the successful strategy of our coalition and many expressed their strong desire to vote for an inclusive bill that protects all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Clearly, our preferred strategy is to pass the original ENDA (H.R. 2015) out of committee. However, if we are faced with a non-inclusive bill following the committee vote, we will work with Congresswoman Baldwin to repair ENDA to include protections on the basis of gender identity. We appreciate that Congressional leaders like Congresswoman Baldwin continue to share our commitment to pass an inclusive bill, and we expect Speaker Pelosi and the House leadership will actively support the Baldwin amendment.
And it looks like John Aravosis has finally started to listen to his site commenters, and has STFU about ENDA. It was embarrassing earlier this week watching people who agreed with Aravosis (we don’t) asking him to please stop picking fights with the trans-inclusive folks, but then, everything Aravosis has said or done on this issue has been uniformly embarrassing.
ENDAblog 