1st. With regard to petitioning politicians:
It is my understanding that petitions to politicians tend to be treated as
statistics. Staff members sort the mail into "for" and "against" piles, and
the politician gets a summary on the lines of : for = 1000, against = 999.
Non constituents don't even make it into the statistics. Hence my
reluctance to become involved in writing petitions.
Discussing this 'off list' with Gail, I wrote:
"In the second half of my foreigners posting I listed the questions I would
be asking if I were a citizen. (------------). I would be posting that
letter not only to my representative (where it would be reduced to a
statistic) but to every newspaper editor in the land in the hope that it
might find a voice somewhere."
It occurred to me that maybe, just maybe I could have some influence on
funding the Udall Bill by recruiting US citizens to the cause who would not
normally have become involved.
Consequently I have written the Open Letter below. It is my intention to
post it to as many US newspapers as I can find addresses for (not to mention
being able to afford stamps for). I admit its a long shot but if only one
editor prints it and only one person responds to it at least it will have
given me a vote so to speak.
Before sending it out I would be grateful if listmembers could let me know
if I have made any errors of fact in the Open Letter or committed some
cardinal sin of American politics which will condemn my effort from the
start. I would also be glad to hear of any American conventions of writing
to the editor that I should observe. Finally I could use all the help I can
get with those addresses. My thanks in advance to anyone who can send me
the address of a US newspaper. E-mail is a lot cheaper than snail so that
would be my preference.
Thanks
Dennis
An Open Letter to the People of the United States of America
Last year the Congress of the United States of America did a wonderful thing
for millions of people all around the world. It voted into law the Morris K
Udall Bill. The Morris K Udall Bill did two things. The first was that it
made $100,000,000 available for research into Parkinson's Disease. The
second was that it touched with hope the individual lives of the millions
world-wide who suffer from this life altering, debilitating disease. It
gave us hope that soon a cure would be found, hope that soon our ordeal
would be over, hope that soon for future generations Parkinson's would be
just a word.
Less than a year later that hope is dying.
It is dying because Congress, having passed the Udall Bill, is now reluctant
to fund it. It is dying, we are told, because of the system. It is dying
despite the heroic efforts of American people with Parkinson's and those who
care about them. And we millions of people with Parkinson's outside the
United States, having no voice in your political process, are condemned to
watch in silence. This is of course in the nature of things. The Udall
Bill is America's business. It is a vote to spend American money on American
research. No one else has rights in the matter. But it's potential to
change our lives in such a profoundly personal way and the hope it has
already engendered in so many of us make it right that we all be represented
to some degree.
To which end we need help.
We need the voices of fair-minded Americans to speak for us. We need you to:
- check how your representatives voted on the Udall Bill,
- pressure those that voted for it to do whatever they have to do to get
it funded,
- remind Congress that the passage of the Udall Bill raised the hopes of
a particularly vulnerable sector of society right around the world and that
it would be cruel to fail us,
- co-ordinate your efforts with your local Parkinson's organisations.
My thanks,
Dennis Greene (who at 48 is an 11 year veteran of Parkinson's Disease)
Perth, Western Australia
