For a year, my neighborhood group Divest Mike has been trying to get in contact with our representative Mike Quigley to talk to him about campaign contributions coming from weapons companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. We see it as our responsibility to take on the military industrial complex locally, where we have some power to make noise about it.
Sunday, October 23, after a year of being avoided, I was finally able to directly speak to Representative Quigley. It didn't go as I thought it would. He made a few things clear in our interaction; he definitely knows who we are and what we were asking him to do, and his behavior in Congress is bought by companies like Lockheed Martin.
So, I played dumb. I asked him what Lockheed Martin writing a check to his campaign has to do with the way he votes in Congress. He could still vote that way, right? He got even more frustrated. He asked me why"you people hate defense companies?" He said Lockheed Martin is a"good company" because they"make things we need.
You have no sway over him, but your voice is a 💯 x times more resonant than his. Telling your story is more likely to bring change than a 💯 letter writing campaigns. It’s not like they don’t hear us. His Q is a good one: What are we going to do abt it?