Maura Finigan, Brown University '05

 From mid-June to late August 2005, I interned with the United States Public Interest Research Group, or USPIRG. This organization advocates for the public interest on a huge variety of issues - from affordable prescription drugs to clean energy to campaign finance reform. Direct lobbying, legal action against lawbreaking companies, research on the problems, and media work are just a few of their many tactics for creating social change. USPIRG is the federal affiliate of the state PIRGs – who, for the past thirty years, have prioritize incremental legislative change. To name just a few, major victories include smoke free restaurants, protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and legislation requiring safer prescription drugs.

I worked on a great variety of issues this summer. On the legal side, most of my work was focused on the aftershocks of Bush's May 2005 repeal of the Roadless Rule. In January 2001, President Clinton signed the Roadless Rule into law, which permanently protected 58 million acres of our country’s pristine national forests from logging, drilling, and other development. Last May, President Bush repealed those protections, thus replacing them with a petition process that requires each state’s governor to undertake a burdensome process to protect the state’s forests. USPIRG worked in coalition with the larger environmental community to develop a multi-faceted plan to fight this repeal; we covered everything from legal action to supporting a reinstatement bill in the House of Representatives to pressuring the governors to re-classify their forests as protected, state by state. Since USPIRG was short-staffed this summer and did not have a staff person doing work on the forest issue, I became the point person for forests. This work consisted primarily of attending regular meetings of the forest coalition, both nationally in DC and on conference calls focusing on individual states, and disseminating what was happening with all national groups on all fronts of the fight. I would then be responsible for briefing our staff on what other groups felt should be done, and for translating legal decisions regarding the Roadless Rule into easy to understand bits of information for staff across the country who were juggling many other issues. Then, I had to make sure I communicated the desires of USPIRG on every decision that came up during these meetings.

The second part of my work with USPIRG was focused primarily on generating political pressure on legislative decision makers. For decades, state PIRG’s have used media exposes about politically salient issues to create such pressure. This summer, I learned and applied the time-tested methodology of generating media coverage on an issue. I spent much of my early time with USPIRG setting up press conferences for a national tour across the country. The “prop tour” (as we called it) was a 20-foot tall oil rig, which a driver hired by USPIRG drove across the country, stopping in over 30 states to raise awareness about the economic, environmental, and public health problems in the 2005 Bush-Cheney Energy Bill. We targeted these events to key political districts whose decision makers we wanted to influence. I was briefed quickly on the process of coalition building, logistics, and press releases, and then spent weeks briefing others across the country on the same thing. This effort resulted in an impressive 211 media hits across the country, and USPIRG worked in coalition with over 35 different organizations. In late July, I spearheaded the Charleston, West Virginia, stop of the tour, planning the entire event and serving as the lead speaker. A few weeks later, I served the same role for a second press conference, releasing a USPIRG research report educating the citizens of Delaware about the unnecessary chemical security dangers of oil refineries. Each of these events generated coverage by 3 television stations and a radio station.

Finally, I spent a good deal of time researching and composing “action alerts” emails to USPIRG’s list of email activists. These emails highlighted a specific action that citizens could take to effect change on some politically hot issue – such as calling or writing their representative to oppose a bill that would have brought campaign finance reform laws back to the time of Watergate. The emails had to be carefully written to be attention grabbing, to be clear, and to inspire average citizens to action. That was often a challenge for people who are versed in wonky legalese.

Early in my internship, I attended my first coalition meeting for Roadless Forests – and I distinctly remember when all of the (clearly very high-level) members of the other groups were discussing the implication of a court decision in a western state that I knew very little about and they asked me what my organization thought. I was speechless. My briefing on the issue had consisted primarily of reading all of USPIRG’s reports on the Roadless Rule. I understood the gist of what we were trying to accomplish, and I had gotten no indication that a grasp on the policy side would not be enough. I sat at the conference table with eight men who had at least 20 years on me with absolutely no conception of the nitty gritty of the political situation in each individual state (which was what pretty much every moment of those coalition meetings were about).

My fellowship gave me a firsthand look at the inherent difficulties in working in coalition with other groups. The different organizations, though in theory working toward the same goals, often could not agree on the process. For example, we discussed a number of strategies, which would have established public support for the reinstatement of the Roadless Rule, but there was no consensus. Because there was constant pressure to “know what USPIRG thought,” and the coalition was my responsibility, I asked a lot more questions, dug a lot deeper, and juggled to help develop a focus for people who were trying to accomplish good in a huge variety of ways.

The challenge, then, was the unexpected nature of political situations – such as the “politics” that happens as a reality of any group of people or organization working together – different priorities, different preferences. These politics, I found, are unexpectedly difficult to navigate, particularly as a single representative forced to make judgment calls on my own. The second “politics problem” was the divide between the issue politics – what we want, what was happening, the background story (which I felt comfortable with) and all of the tiny moment-to-moment things (for example, the aide of a certain state’s governor, who is with us on a lot of issues, met with similar groups last month and we don’t want to wear out our welcome.) Details were crucial to the meetings I was at, and no ready answers were in the pre-packaged.

Since graduating from Brown last May, I am currently employed with MassPIRG, one of the state PIRGs, in their two-year fellowship program as a field associate. This job entails creating outside political pressure on important lawmakers in their own districts for certain bills. Unlike the inside game of lawmaking, court decisions, or lobbying, field organizing is about building long-term political power in a specific geographic area. I will finish the fellowship program in the summer of 2007 and then attend law school, with plans to either return to USPIRG or advocate for another organization that prioritizes incremental legislative change.