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How to Lobby Your Legislators: ACLU Offers Training for LGBTQ Activists

If you would like to guide your legislators toward more intelligent policy-making on transgender issues and related LGBTQ/Two Spirit concerns during the 2020 Session, the American Civil Liberties Union has training for you. The South Dakota ACLU is offering two 90-minute online Activist Academies, on Sunday, November 17, at 2 p.m. CST and Thursday, November 21, at 7 p.m. CST.

Students at the ACLU Activist Academy will develop their skills as advocates and activists at all skill levels. Special attention to laying out the basics for attendees who may be new to advocacy. With an eye toward the legislative session, attendees will learn about the legislative process and how they can best influence elected officials as well as how they can be year-round advocates of the issues they care most about [ACLU-SD, invitation to Activist Academy, retrieved 2019.11.11].

If you’re in South Dakota and want to make a difference on LGBTQ issues, lobbying your legislators may offer you the most direct avenue to real impact for protecting your and your neighbors’ rights. The bully in the White House won’t listen to you as he rolls back civil rights. You can wear your Mayor Pete shirt around town, but neither Buttigieg nor any other Democratic candidate (any of whom will be better for equality than the status quo) will spend much if any time here, and our diluted votes for decency won’t happen until next November. The practical bad things you can stop, right here and right now, are the bad ideas that potty-panicked theocrats like Speaker Steve Haugaard, Senator Phil Jensen, and Governor Kristi Noem may try pushing into law here in South Dakota. Win your local fights for equality; lobby your Legislature!

ACLU-SD is offering this activist training online via Zoom, so no matter where you are in South Dakota, as long as you’ve got signal, you can join and learn. Register online for the Activist Academy you want to attend, then sharpen your civic participation skills for January!

5 Comments

  1. Porter Lansing 2019-11-11 13:19

    PETE BUTTIGIEG (A Maltese surname derived from the Arabic, meaning chicken owner or poulterer)
    ~ Mayor Pete is surging so let me teach y’all how to pronounce and remember his last name.
    -Three syllables, two are the same.
    -First syllable – BOOT as in rugged footwear or “boot” Trump out on his keester
    -Second & Third syllables – EDGE as in cutting edge ideas. e.g. A public option to allow anyone to buy into Medicare, but only if you choose to.
    ~ All Together it’s pronounced Boot-Edge-Edge *there ‘ya go

  2. Debbo 2019-11-11 16:37

    The ACLU provides such invaluable assistance in states like SD.

  3. jerry 2019-11-12 08:31

    Televised IMPEACHMENT of CHUBBY TRUMPY begins this morning. Democratic Democracy at it’s finest hour. Chubby has got to go man, his stench is such that we are all suffocating. Once folks know how these processes work, the better citizens we all shall be.

  4. Debbo 2020-06-15 13:32

    Yeah. The Fed Soc and wingnuts must be losing their minds. Even the scummiest people they sully the courts with still have a bit of intelligence.

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