THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE! UU goes to Tallahassee

 Mary Kellough, Marsha Williams, Claudia Atkins, and Nana Royer--just returned from two days at Unitarian Universalist Justice Florida Legislative Days in Tallahassee. They convened at the UU Tallahassee Church for dinner and listened to the dynamic keynote speaker Desmond Meade. Desmond Meade heads up the Voting Restoration Amendment campaign, to put this amendment on the ballot in 2018. They met at the Capitol Rotunda for a group photo and then disbursed to visit legislators. They visited the office of Sen. Travis Hutson and Rep. Cyndi Stevenson and Rep. Paul Renner, leaving handouts and lobbying to get those bills on committee agendas which are supported by the UUJC. They also sat in on a couple committees and got hackles raised listening to a couple of the bills which are now in committee, e.g. the bill which mandates that the Florida state motto "In God We Trust" must be displayed in each school room (in addition to the state flag which already as the motto enblazened on it!). St. Augustine had a most noteworthy attendance. 

From one of the attendees:

"We attended 2 subcommittee meetings while waiting for appointments. You probably heard about the 'Motto' bill...If we'd known what was being debated in the committees, we could have signed a card stating the bill we wanted to address to the committee & as part of john p q public, said our bit. Claudia got really riled up about an education bill. And Marsha was questioning the reason behind a bill regulating birthing centers. 

 I learned a lot. Big Ex.: even if the entire committee/subcommittee feels 1 way & the chair feels another way, it's the chair who decides. The chair is appointed by the president of the legislative body. As Huttson's aid explained to us, there's politics within the politics. Another ex.: he said it was a bad sign if a bill was in a 3rd or 4th subcommittee. It'd probably die. The # of committees a bill goes thru is decided by the Committee's chair. That indicates to me that he can 'kill' a bill by sending it to too many sub committees. I could be wrong on this, but that was my take. Another ex., explained by Rep. Renner's aid when commenting on the quantity of groups like us descending on the capitol, the legislative calendar is decided by whether it's an election year or not. Since this one is, the calendar started in January".