CCL National Conference and Lobby Day 2023

Tokuda lobby meeting - Reva, Harita, Paul, Mitch, Robert, Sarah

By Paul Bernstein

The CCL National Conference had a great buzz to it with close to 1000 volunteers and a great excitement for folks to see each other in three dimensions.  Below is a link to the many sessions and a song recorded at and for the lobbying event. In all, CCL had over 430 (!!!!) lobby meetings There were 63 young people under 18, at least twice that number of higher ed students, and so much more diversity in attendees - it was great.

Our in person lobby team included youth and old folks.  We also had a last minute appearance by Sarah Moore who joined us at the meeting with Mitch Heidenreich, Rep. Tokuda's aide.  It must have been Sarah and the presence of all the folks on zoom that caused the Representative to appear briefly before being called to the floor to vote.

For the other lobby meetings, we only met with the staffers, but all of them were great and supportive of CCL's policy agenda.  We will be getting back to all of them to set up future meetings to go over some of CCL's legislative priorities ranging from the PROVE IT Act to the hopefully re-introduced EICDA.

Though the trip to DC is long and tiring, I think it's safe to say that everyone who made the journey found it inspiring and invigorating.  Hope more of you can make the trip next year, and if you have time, I recommend checking out some of the sessions as much great information was provided.

Here are all of the conference sessions, edited and uploaded individually to YouTube, and here is the 2023 Conference Session Playlist. Also - if you haven't, be sure to check out this fun music video that was created impromptu by CCL volunteers, inspired by a musician who was trying to figure out if and how he might fit in CCL.