JB: Where's the press, PEN? I know I keep asking but this is a BIG STORY, one of the biggest ever. It's a coup really. Or am I overstating?
PEN: The progressive blogs are all over this. Just do an online search for Trans Pacific Partnership and you'll find it all.
JB: You're right: According to Google, about 12,100,000 results.
PEN: Are the big CORPORATE media channel talking about this, some of the same ones that we are fighting in federal court right now for rejecting ads for our new full length feature film, The Last War Crime ? Of course not, they are some of the beneficiaries of this seizure of power. It is every bit a coup, if and only if they are allowed to get away with it.
JB: Okay, PEN. You've laid out the problem pretty clearly. Now, what have you got up your activist's sleeve in terms of action we can take to fight this?
PEN: With this new threat bearing down on us, we worked straight through the holiday to take our activism to a new level. We now have an upgraded and updated function on our action pages for sending letters to the editor of your nearest local newspaper, and here's why: Recently a former congressional aide wrote that NOTHING gets the attention of members of Congress more that when THEIR NAME appears in a letter to the editor.
JB: Good point.
PEN: It's called publicity, and the worst of them are petrified that people will realize the extent to which they are ignoring their little people constituents in favor of their biggest campaign contributors.
JB: I still don't get it. What do they think will happen if, God forbid, this is passed and people learn how they've screwed us over?
PEN: Oh, they've got lots of practice on covering their butts on bad policy. Anybody remember, "Nobody would have thought that terrorists would fly airplanes into buildings," or "How could we have known the intelligence was wrong?" The point is, we need to maximally get our protests in now, BEFORE the dirty deed is done, and really raise a ruckus about it.
JB: What's the timeline here, PEN?
PEN: The word is both the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee will introduce fast track bills perhaps as soon the the first week of the new congressional session starting this coming week. But we are talking online here. We can move at lightning speed if people just get engaged.
JB : Give us the links, please, and we'll get on this. How long does it take to do what we need to do online? Half an hour? Twenty minutes? What are we talking about here?
PEN: One of the things we worked so hard on over the "holidays" was creating another brand new function. On the new action page for this there is a button you can click that instantly looks up your members of Congress and tells you who has signed one of the congressional letters protesting this (Yes, Virginia, we do have some members of congress that are capable of integrity), and who has not. And we are emphasizing how CRITICALLY important it is to use the letter to the editor function and call out your members of Congress BY NAME, for or against.
Stop TPP Fast Track Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1149.php
JB: So, if each of us spends a few minutes on this, we have a chance of stopping this horrid proposal in its tracks?
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