My Coffee with Scott

(Writing this up quickly; will make edits to update/add as I have more time)

Last week I flew down to DC to participate in "Coffee with Scott," the one opportunity Sen. Brown has given MA constituents to be able to speak with him without having to pay into his campaign coffers. (12 times a year! First Wed. of every month. If you pre-arrange it with the office. Coffees are in Washington D.C.)

I went down to speak to the issue of efforts in Congress to weaken the Clean Air act provisions. I spoke as a mom of two kids, and I was with 3 other Massachusetts moms.

We asked Sen. Brown his disposition on Sen. Rand Paul's bill to roll-back cross-state air pollution regulations, and his position on regulating mercury emissions from smokestacks, biggest emitters of mercury which is POISON to our children's developing brains (as any pregnant woman learns when she finds out she can't eat Tunafish---too mercury-soaked).

We were relieved to learn from Brown's enviro. policy aide that the senator will vote against Paul's efforts to increase cross-state pollution. This is in fact a no-brainer position from MA's point of view, as it requires no additional regulation for MA industries, and junk from other states' pollution that is reduced with current regulation. (NB: the Senator himself went to talking points about jobs and "demand" and tangents about "siting" (?); the aide seemed knowledgeable and very clear that Brown would oppose the Paul bill)

However, Brown was evasive and non-committal with regards to regulating Mercury. This is disappointing but not really surprising. "The market". "Demand". ???

I will update this post over the next few days, with links and pics and more information about the legislation in question

YOUR LETTERS

I did not remember during our 20 min of group Q&A to directly give Sen. Brown the 30 messages that friends and fellow activists asked me to deliver to him. But I did hand them to the Aide from Needham afterward, and made it very clear that these were constituent voices that must be read. My cover letter also specifically requested that the Senator's office respond to the individual writers.

The aide was visibly impressed by the number of letters I handed to him. I would like to compile them and share them soon.

MY IMPRESSIONS

I will update/write more on this... On the whole, the experience with the Senator was about what I expected. I was impressed with his staff; I was not particularly impressed with the Senator. He showed willingness to hear questions from constituents (me!) but sought to end the Q/A session rather abruptly when Qs were not softballs. However, others in the room awesomely spoke up and made sure their voices were heard. He got testy a couple of times, and his reliance on talking points was notable. Once we were back to the glad-hand portion with the photo ops, he was friendly/personable and seemed more at ease.

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other articles/links on Scott Brown