Kol haKavod to a congregant - and a challenge to you

I received this e-mail from a congregant last week. A mazal tov to him for his social justice actions and passed on to you as an encouragement to use your voice...

Dear friends,

Today I visited my congressman's local office, for the first time
ever. I went to personally discuss my reasons for supporting major
health-care reform. Rep. Lance is a Republican, but so far he is not
a hard-liner. I thought it was worth a few minutes of my time to make
a personal appeal.

I had a ten-minute discussion with a staffer, in which I laid out my
key reasons for supporting reform, and in particular a public option.
The staffer listened well, and told me something about NJ law which I
didn't know. (See below if you are interested.) He also told me the
congressman opposed the public option, because he thought that would
hurt the private insurers and eventually could lead to a single-payer
system. I told him I understood that reasoning, but disagreed with
the assumption that a single-payer system is undesirable.

I also left a sheet I got from following the link below. It contains
some boilerplate, but also has a box for personal comments, which I
filled up.

http://my.barackobama.com/OfficeVisit

I encourage you to represent your views, whatever they may be, to your
representative. Take your kids!