Adam Garcia, one of the seven people who staged a sit-in (and ended up staying overnight) at Sen. Cantwell’s Seattle offices last Tuesday, posted in the Slog comments thread last Friday night.

In case it got buried over the weekend, here’s Adam’s post. (At the end, he mentions that his group— which managed to score a May 6 meeting w/ Cantwell—is submitting 10 questions to Cantwell in advance of the meeting. Adam’s obviously reading the Slog. So, if people have suggestions for Cantwell questions, post ‘em here.)

I’m Adam, one of the seven at the sit-in. In the conference call we had with D.C., the first day, we asked her to explain why she doesn’t support Kerry’s statements made in his “A Right and Responsibility to Speak Outâ€� speech on April 11th. Of course we didn’t speak with her, but her foreign policy experts. They circled jerked us with non-answers that were tantamount to asking if we liked Iraqis to have electricity, hospitals, etc. These weren’t rhetorical questions either, they were seriously asking us. They said all this while ignoring the fact by every conceivable metric Iraq is getting worse.

We simply couldn’t fathom why she refuses to take a leadership role here and publicly endorse Kerry. She is quick to point out the shortcomings of the administration but when given a chance, Feingold’s call for censure, she didn’t open her mouth. Censure doesn’t mean squat! It’s the political equivalent of thumbing your nose at someone. She couldn’t even do that, how sad.

At this sit-in we urged her to stand up, and galvanize the citizens against war. Russ Feingold is blazing a path that she needs to follow.

I know this is bad for her campaign now and that this is seen as a clandestine ploy by and for McGavick. That’s simply untrue. The truth is that the time to hem and haw while waiting for someone to act is over. That doesn’t mean we’re going to wait for the Dems to take the majority and suddenly be anti-war. Fuck that, if they aren’t anti-war now they won’t be later. Kerry said it best in his speech: “The true defeatists are those who believe America is so weak that it must sacrifice its principles to the pursuit of illusory power.”

This was my first action toward pressuring the Senator. Everyone else there had previous meetings with her as far back as November of last year. Back then she couldn’t have been troubled to read Joe Colgan’s two hundred word op-ed prior to the meeting. She read it there on the spot, and it really pissed off Abe.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/257833_veterandad02.html

At least at this next meeting her staffers promised that Cantwell would be able to respond to 10 questions that we are submitting prior to our meeting. At least she can give us that. Let’s hope she can do more.

Posted by Adam G - April 28, 2006 11:38 PM