Cleveland, Ohio: Senator Sherrod Brown

Badgley, Laing, Sammons, Meredith Turner (Senator Brown's Liaison), and Tim Krueger (Cleveland resident, Coordinator Ohio Student Environmental Coalition)

Thursday, September 17, 2009. Meredith Turner met with us on behalf of Senator Brown. She paid close attention, asked questions, and told us very clearly that she doesn’t often get proposals that are as thorough and sensible as what we gave her.

Tim Krueger, an Ohio native and Cornell graduate, is the Coordinator for the Ohio Students Environmental Coalition. He attended the meeting with us, and spoke with Meredith about organizing a roundtable discussion that Senator Brown might attend to hear from his constituents about the problems with cap & trade, the error of including biomass with solar, wind and georthermal, and the underlying major problem of committing to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We have done an excellent job in our communications with Senators in the 4 states we visited. In Arkansas and Ohio, we have also made strong local contacts that we hope will develop into Climate SOS partnerships at the grass roots level. The Senators need to hear from us over and over and over again.

Meredith, Senator Brown’s liaison, told us it’s hard for them to know what constituents really want, because they hear most often from the money people; when they do hear from the everyday people, the presentations are almost never thorough and specific like Climate SOS’s.

OUR GRASSROOTS WORK HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN.