HOW GRASSROOT ACTIVISTS BEAT LOBBYISTS
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ws/2010/04/26/how_grassroot_activists_beat_lobbyis ts
April 26 2010
Activists convince lawmaker to champion Armenian cause.
The Armenian-American lobby, which is considered one of the most
successful ethnic lobbies in the nation, scored a big win last month
when the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a resolution calling
the Ottoman-era killings of Armenians in Turkey a genocide.
The controversial issue has been brewing for decades, and U.S.
lawmakers risk hurting ties with Turkey by siding with the Armenian
groups.
CQ reporter Jonathan Broder writes that while the Turkish government
has hired lobbyists to fight the resolution, the camp advocating for
Armenians is made up of mostly grassroots groups.
So how did the grassroots groups get so far?
Broder describes a 2007 public meeting where a constituent asked Rep.
Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) for her views on the issue. When Giffords,
who had recently been appointed to the Armed Services and Foreign
Affairs committees, appeared to be non-committal over the genocide
resolution, advocacy groups stepped in:
Advocacy groups including the Armenian Cultural Society and the
Assembly of America sent Giffords books and articles about the
deportations and massacres of 1915, which most historians regard
as the first genocide of the 20th century. They peppered her with
e-mails…. When she returned to Arizona for other public appearances,
Armenian activists took her aside at several of them and noted how
unseemly it would appear for a Jewish member of the House — one
who worked as a state legislator to promote Holocaust education in
Arizona schools — to deny the genocide of another people.
In October of that year, the lobbying campaign paid off. When the
resolution came up for a vote in the Foreign Affairs Committee,
Giffords voted in favor of the measure, which the panel narrowly
approved.
It goes to show that, even in the face of a well-funded lobby,
activists can persuade a lawmaker to champion their cause. While
lobbyists use money for influence, advocacy groups have strength in
numbers and persistence.