Fwd: Catholic Efforts on Iran Update

From:frotondaro@catholicsinalliance.org To: john.podesta@gmail.com, mfisher@hillaryclinton.com Date: 2015-08-21 12:19 Subject: Fwd: Catholic Efforts on Iran Update

John, I thought you might be interested in this report from the CACG exec director Chris Hale on efforts to have the Catholic org community promote the Iran Treaty. There is a tremendous amount of potential in these inter Faith orgs including the ability to reach so me working class voters, Fred Sent from my iPad Begin forwarded message: > From: "Bejamin Palumbo" <bpalumbo@covad.net> > Date: August 21, 2015 at 9:53:56 AM EDT > To: "'Diane E. Randall'" <Diane@fcnl.org> > Cc: "'David Culp'" <David@fcnl.org>, "'Christopher Hale'" <chale@catholicsinalliance.org>, "'Catholics In Alliance'" <frotondaro@catholicsinalliance.org>, "'James Salt'" <jsalt@catholics-united.org> > Subject: FW: Catholic Efforts on Iran Update > > Hi Diane, > I wanted you to see this report from our Exec. Dir. Chris Hale. > We are going to seek a meeting with Warner, and requests are in the works for Coons and Casey. > Best wishes, > Ben > > From: Christopher Hale [mailto:chale@catholicsinalliance.org] > Sent: Friday, August 21, 2015 8:29 AM > To: Bejamin Palumbo; Marie Dennis; Jacek Orzechowski; Bob Cooke; Marie Lucey; Allison Walter; Heather Booth; frotondaro@americanprogress.org; Fred Rotondaro; James Salt > Cc: Jennifer Labbadia; Jocelyn Macurdy Keatts; Elizabeth Hardt; Stephen Seufert; Dr. Arthur Fitzmaurice > Subject: Catholic Efforts on Iran Update > > Dear friends and colleagues, > > Good morning! Let me apologize in advance for a lengthy e-mail. If you don't have time to read the whole thing, I've bolded the important points. > Our advertisement began running on National Catholic Reporter and Commonweal yesterday. Right now, when you click the advertisement, the link takes you to MoveOn's 60 Day to Stop A War Take Action website. From there, you are able to dial into your Member of Congress and request them to support the Iran Deal. > > At some point today, that link will change to our own website, which will list all the groups' names, simple talking points, and give people a chance to dial in three elected officials (their one US Representatives and two Senators). While the MoveOn site is very effective, ours will ensure that people calling into the offices identify as a person of faith, which is important in both our narrative creation (Catholics support the deal) and coalition building (the God Squad takes action). > > We will have a good data metric in the next few days about how the advertisement is doing. > The letters to both Senators Cardin and Mikulski have been e-mailed, faxed, and snail mailed to the appropriate parties. This morning, I will make follow up calls to the state chief of staffs and schedulers. I imagine we'll know early next week if they plan on meeting with our groups' representatives. If it appears that isn't the case, I'm developing a grass-tops digital strategy and local media strategy to encourage them to change their minds. This will hopefully only boost the great work and meetings made possible by the work of Bob, Marie D, Marie L, Ben, and others. > On that note, I have phone calls early next week with senior advocacy staffers for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Archdiocese of Washington (which includes territory in Maryland), and the Maryland Catholic Conference. > > While I think there should be many goals for these meetings, I think the top-line goal is pretty clear: we need Archbishop William Lori and Cardinal Donald Wuerl to make direct appeals to Senators Cardin and Mikulski on this issue. While I don't have any advance knowledge, I have a sense from the conversations setting up the meetings that there might be willingness for that to happen. > I will be sending an additional e-mail to our C4 community on Tuesday to asking them to contact their Members of Congress. This was remarkably successful last week. Based on the digital metrics, we can safely assume thousands of our Catholic brothers and sisters are taking action on this issue. My colleagues will be working with our allies to scan the local newspapers this upcoming week to see if people are communicating faith values in supporting the deal to letters to the editors in newspapers across the nation. My initial sense is that they are. That would be something to be proud of for our group. > I'll be taking some time off on both today and Monday to rejuvenate myself as my colleagues and I continue our grueling preparation for Pope Francis's apostolic trip to the US. As you can imagine, Iran is just a portion of the work we're doing in preparation for the Holy Father's trip. > > From Friday afternoon until Monday morning (the traditional weekend), I'll be on retreat and won't be accessible by phone or e-mail. However, you can reach me today and Monday through my colleagues (CC'd here) who know how to get a hold of me. > Thank you for being patient with me as I attempt to navigate the unified, but--at times--diverse hopes and expectations of the group. I will continue to try to balance the goals and needs of the group with the pressure to move the ball forward with the clock winding down in the fourth quarter of this important effort. I spoke to the White House yesterday and they assure us the media's moniker calling us "God Squad" isn't just sweet nothings, but actually a fair assessment of the substantial difference we're making in this conversation. > Thank you again for all your hard work and continued support. And if you get a chance, please pray for me and my colleagues as we enter into some needed rest this weekend! > > Christopher J. Hale > ​Executive Director | ​ > Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good > 641 S Street Northwest, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20001 > (W) (202) 499-4968 | (C) (615) 424-6003 > ​ > Rebuilding Our Nation, Renewing Our Society >