Dear Emerson UU Friends,
Thank you so much for your generous support of Texas Impact in 2017!
We can all agree that the 2016 elections had major ramifications for American politics. The elections also impacted the 2017 Texas legislative session, and they impacted the ability of organizations like Texas Impact to mobilize our members for effective advocacy. Nevertheless, thanks to your support and the support of other congregations, Texas Impact was able to lead effective, mainstream faith-based advocacy on health care and related issues, and we achieved some impressive results.
Emerson’s investment was particularly important because it came at a time when national and regional foundations pulled back from funding advocacy as they struggled to figure out how to move forward in the new political environment. This memo focuses on two experiences from 2017, where Emerson’s support was crucial to making faith-based advocacy in Texas possible. The experiences were especially important because they provided vital insights into how mainstream faith communities mobilize for advocacy. Because of this, Emerson’s investment in 2017 helped to build a more solid foundation for faith-based advocacy going forward.
1. ACA Defense
At the state level, the 2016 elections left the Medicaid expansion issue “dead on arrival” in the Texas Legislature. Texas Impact, the Texas Association of Business, and others collaborated in 2016 to publish a report showing that indigent care meaningfully impacts local property taxes—a convincing business-minded argument for Medicaid expansion in any other year that unfortunately was sidelined in the national political turmoil. With Emerson’s support, we had begun to mobilize faith communities to advocate for Medicaid expansion through our “Above Politics” faith-based weekend. Happening just days after the election, “Above Politics” ironically was completely overshadowed by political turmoil.
Instead of the positive, proactive agenda we had intended to advance in the 2017 legislative session, we spent 2017 fighting to defend the Affordable Care Act from various congressional attacks. The good news was that our “Rapid Response” network of advocates—which we had developed in anticipation of Medicaid expansion advocacy—was able to pivot, mobilizing quickly and effectively around ACA defense. In particular, Texas faith communities played a substantive role in influencing Texas Congressman Will Hurd to vote against repeal.
Our work with Congressman Hurd proved to be a great example of the unique power of faith networks to mobilize across district and party lines around common concerns. Policy advocacy staff from our national denominational partners contacted us to say that they had been in meetings with Congressman Hurd, and they believed he would be receptive to calls from his own constituents to oppose ACA repeal. Since Texas Impact doesn’t have a huge number of network members in that district, we instead called on our members across the state to reach out within their own denominational groups to folks in Hurd’s district. We set up a special phone number that forwarded to Congressman Hurd’s office, and we activated our Rapid Response network to generate calls to that number. We generated about 200 constituent calls to the number in 2 days…and Congressman Hurd voted against ACA repeal.
2. “Bathroom Bill” Opposition
The issue of “bathroom privacy” became a major issue for mainstream faith communities when the Governor called a special legislative session in the summer. Texas Impact responded to calls for help from other mainstream legislative constituencies including business and local leaders, and demand from diverse faith communities throughout Texas, mobilizing members of all of our denominations and faith traditions around several key activities under the campaign “Mainstream, Not Extreme.” The mobilization included calls to lawmakers; an online petition; a Capitol display highlighting diverse faith perspectives; and two high-profile lobby days featuring faith leaders from around the state.
Our experience mobilizing our Rapid Response members around the ACA repeal efforts allowed us to move very quickly and efficiently. For Mainstream, Not Extreme, we had the Rapid Response members mobilize other folks in their denominations in key legislative districts that changed on a frequent basis as legislative debate went on. Social media turned out to be very effective for this, as did old-fashioned “phone trees,” in addition to texting. Leaders of other constituencies were especially impressed that the mainstream faith communities were so tenacious, with individuals and groups returning to the Capitol three and four times.
These two instances are just a couple of examples of how Texas Impact was able to build our capacity to mobilize faith communities to advocate for policy change. There is no question that our work in 2017 would not have been possible without Emerson’s financial support. We also were grateful for Emerson’s enthusiastic participation in events at the Capitol—including the Service of Public Witness on the first day of the legislative session; “Cover Texas Now” health care advocacy day; and “Y’all Means All” interfaith bathroom bill advocacy day.
We look forward to serving the Texas Unitarian community going forward, and we hope to see many members of Emerson at the Capitol in 2019!
Attached are a couple of photos from throughout the year.
Love,
Bee—
Bee Moorhead
Executive Director
Texas Interfaith Center for Public Policy/Texas Impact200 East 30th Street, Austin, Texas 78705http://www.texasimpact.org
http://www.facebook.com/bee.moorhead
http://twitter.com/BeeMoorhead
Texas faith leaders established Texas Impact in 1973 to be a voice of religious social concern to the Texas Legislature.