Public Campaign got great seats at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference Brain Trust event in Washington, DC where a panel on the benefits of full public financing of campaigns hosted leaders from both the political and social justice spheres to talk about campaigning, empowering small donors, and turning the focus back to voters. Gotta say: one of the most inspiring events on Clean Elections I have ever attended. Read on for a minute-by-minute report!4:10pm: William McNary of US Action takes the stage. No punches will be pulled: “if you don’t do politics, politics will do you!” He introduces the speakers to much applause. Oh, hey, Britney Spears joke!  Now down to business. He talks about Sen. Barack Obama’s work on behalf of public financing of campaigns while state Senator in Illinois. Dig at Buckley v Valeo!  Mr. McNary notes that despite Sen. Obama’s success in recruiting donors over the internet, most people are still far removed from the political process, and especially the donation process.  4:19pm: Hey, about the $700 billion dollars we’re giving Wall Street – makes a public financing program seem like a bargain, don’t it?  4:20pm: Meet Judge Wanda Bryant of the North Carolina Court of Appeals, Clean Elections candidate extraordinaire!  She ran for a seat on the bench in her state in 2002. It was a major challenge for her to mount a campaign, as a new judge and first-time candidate, to say nothing of the fundraising challenges in presented.  Had to raise money until the end of the campaign – and didn’t win.  But was reappointed to bench that year when a vacancy opened up. She had to campaign again in 2004, which meant she had to start campaigning in 2003 – started to hear about this new public financing program, and that’s what she ran under to win her seat. Feels the new system has been a tremendous help to North Carolina’s elections.4:29pm: Welcome Gary Winfield, Clean Elections candidate and State Assembly hopeful. 4:31pm: Special guest!  Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) takes the stage. Says public policy is going to run amok until we get the big money out of politics (she’s run over here in the middle of negotiating the Wall Street bailout…so she knows!). We live in a time of deregulation, excess, and greed – she sees how it works now and is convinced we have to have public financing.  This has to be the struggle we wage next year. If we want people to run for office - women, African Americans, young people, people who could do so much good – then we need to take away the fundraising hurdle. 4:35pm: So much time is taking up by fundraising.  Politics is big business.  We have to make this change now because we have to elect women, people of color, and young people. We have to push the envelope on public financing, need to have dialogue and the political will to do this.  Until we get behind it, we’re only going to get moderate campaign finance reform measures. That is how we change our political landscape and our policy agenda. That’s how we’ll get universal health care, and how to get education resources. Let’s make a commitment to passing public financing the Senate and House come January!4:40pm: Welcome Maryland’s Rep. Donna Edwards (this woman is my hero). She’s been on the frontlines of the democracy fight for years. We know we can elect candidates with Clean Elections and that when we do they come into office with a different attitude – working for voters. When you have energy policy driven by corporations they end up walking away with the store.  And here we are again with the financial services industry. We have a lot work to do in the US Congres to say we’re going to clean up our elections. The philanthropic community is starting to stand up to realize that until we change how we finance elections we won’t see the public policy we want to see on other fronts. Prior to her run for Congress Edwards never understood how grueling and humiliating the process is of fundraising, calling people and begging for money. Something really “vile” about going after campaign cash, and not something people should be spending so much time on. Gets in the way of having the opportunity to do reading on bills, sitting down with constituents, studying $700 billion bailout bill, gets in the way and it shouldn’t. 4:50pm: Hey, back to Gary Winfield! He’s a community organizer in New Haven who works with young people – not the usual face you see in the statehouse. Because of public financing – which took away the need to have access to wealth – he was able to take on an incumbent in his primary and win.  If you want to change what goes on the statehouse, you need to change how people get elected. Campaign finance reform let him get his face and his message out to people and have a shot. 4:54pm: Put your hands together for Rep. Karen Bass, speaker of California’s Assembly. She talks about the bill sitting on Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk to create a Clean Elections pilot program for the Secretary of State’s office. Thinks it may be vetoed, but thinks it’s an important step in building the movement for campaign finance reform. Serving as a Speaker means she has to raise $14 million dollars for this hotly contested election. A state House race can cause $2 million for a good-size state district. Lee would love nothing more than to focus on public policy but in order to advance in leadership etc. you have to raise major money to prove yourself. This is a particular challenge for women, and for women of color. She learned how to play golf to boost her fundraising!5pm: Lee wants to focus public policy, but can’t.  To prove she’s worthy of her job she has to raise millions. She looks forward to a day when you can be in public office and actually focus on policy.5:01pm: Co-founder of United Farm Workers Dolores Huerta, organizer extraordinaire and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation takes the mic! She thinks if more people knew about Clean Elections they’d rise up for it, we just have to close the knowledge gap. She knows there’s something wrong with the system when you have so many empty houses and so many homeless people – Congress isn’t running the show, the wealthy interests are. Clean Elections reform is a way to get people to participate. She’s spent time in Sacramento and seen the way corporate interests intercede in the most innocuous legislation to protect their profits. Someone who puts $5 into a campaign is invested – is going to watch the candidate, keep them accountable, and stay involved. 5:09pm: Hilary Shelton of the NAACP’s Washington bureau is here! Say this is a movement to reclaim our government. This system is broken – the megaphone size is determined by the depth of one’s pocket. He spends his time taking public policy ideas to Capitol Hill – ideas that would help ordinary people get on in their lives – but for some reason those common sense issues don’t carry the day. Our fight is to make the voice of Americans heard loudly and clearly. We’ve seen this with usurious credit card practices, abusive mortgage lending, health care, gun control. The fundraising cycle is constant, and it’s a sad use of resources and time. We hire these people to work on the issues that face us as citizens and they’re spending their time raising money. 5:17pm: Last up for this panel is Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus. The Caucus is doing a campaign this year called “Respect My Vote” during the 2008 elections; he’s proud to be working with his generation (the group has 700,000 members who range in age from 13 to 43). For Rev. Yearwood Fair and Clean Election is a life and death issue.  He calls this “our lunch counter moment” in the fight for Fair Elections. He believes that people are dying because our politicians are spending more time trying to get funders than they are taking care of people in their community.  It is life and death when they’re more concerned about insurance companies than they are about sick children.  Yearwood realizes this isn’t about Democratic vs. Republican, but about a Congress that puts humanity at the forefront.  And you can’t do that if you’re owned by a corporation, or an interest. He vows to use the tools of his generation to do this campaign, like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube – for it to work we need Fair and Clean Elections. “The Revolution may not be televised but it will be uploaded!”  93% of people who hadn’t gone to college (between ages 18-29) didn’t vote on Super Tuesday saying this system is not their system – and they say it rightly. Why should they vote when they aren’t heard?  Put together Fair Elections and we’ll see that number of people not voting go down – Yearwood guarantees it. Good a place as you can get to wrap up this panel I think.  Very inspiring group of people, with a genuine understanding of why Clean Elections is a necessity to move this country forward.  Get out – go to work!