Mass Mailings for Chemical Security Legislation

In one of my blog postings yesterday I chided two activist organizations for using the same wording in their submissions to the Surface Transportation Board. I noted that such ‘duplicative submissions’ were counter productive and detracted from the legitimate message being submitted. There is, of course, an exception to this ‘rule’; if elected officials can be flooded with a very large number of identical letters from their constituents, it may cause a change in a weakly held position. The three key words in that ‘if’ statement were ‘very large number’. Dozens of submission will not suffice. Multiple hundreds may effect a very weakly held position. For real effect, a letter/email campaign needs thousands copies to flood an office to make fence straddlers move one way or the other. And it might take tens of thousands to convince a Congressman to change a publicly held position. Chemical Security Legislation Email Campaign Yesterday while searching Twitter© for postings related to ‘chemical facility security’ I ran across two posts about people signing onto an email campaign directed at Congress to get passage of a ‘chemical security legislation’. I checked out the links provided in the Tweets© and found a very effective message tied into the current Bayer CropScience controversy. The message would be very familiar to anyone that has read the CAP Report, Chemical Security 101, or last fall’s letter writing campaign by coalition of public interest groups. Bayer and CFATS Reauthorization What was interesting about this letter is that it was tied into the Bayer issue. The form letter said:

“I recently learned about the explosion at Bayer CropScience's Institute West Virginia Plant that killed two workers and threatened local residents. I am shocked that despite this serious accident, which could have been much worse, the corporation responsible is attempting to suppress important information and oppose tighter regulations.”

Readers of this blog will recognize what ‘suppress important information’ refers to. While I have not specifically heard that Bayer opposes ‘tighter regulations’, I would suspect that they would object to any serious attempt to impose inherently safer technology (IST) on their use of methyl isocyanate, a toxic inhalation hazard (TIH). They make and store large quantities of this material and then use it as a raw material for a number of products that they manufacture at the site. Many local groups in West Virginia have called on Bayer to stop using or at least stop storing large quantities of this material. Interestingly enough, this particular facility would probably not be covered by the legislation reauthorizing CFATS that was proposed last year. It is already covered under the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) and so exempted from CFATS coverage. It would take a major legislative change to include the Bayer facility in CFATS. Let’s ignore that for the moment, following the example of the email campaign writers. Behind the Scenes The web site is run by TrueMajority which was “founded by Ben Cohen, Co-founder, Ben and Jerry's” ice cream. According to the web site it “is a grassroots education and advocacy joint project of UsAction and UsAction Education Fund”. I am not interested in digging into the identity of these organizations. I assume that they are professionally run and funded. This web site certainly supports that supposition. Some one that wants to ‘follow President Obama’s example’ and support the passage of chemical security legislation simply has to fill in some contact information on the web page. They can then either make some personal edits to the message or accept the version shown on the site and hit the send button. The web site will then send the email to the appropriate Senators and Congressman. If there is an effective advertising campaign supporting this page (I have not seen one, but I would probably not be part of the target audience in any case) then this campaign could provide a large number of emails, particularly to Senators (since every voter has two Senators and there are only 100 Senators). The number may even be large enough to sway some of those fence sitters. If properly done, this could be sufficient to get a closure vote in the Senate to shut off debate and bring the legislation to an actual vote. To be effective this campaign is starting much too early. The legislation has not yet even been introduced. A campaign of this sort need to peak just as the legislation is moving towards actual consideration. That way the large volume of email is catching the short attention span of the politician just as he/she is beginning to make up their mind on how to vote.