WRITE GOVERNOR RAUNER! (A Request from Kate Singletary, WLSU Legislative Chair (IRTA))

Our best advice from state legislator visits in the last two months may be surprising. When we ask, “What is the most effective thing we could do as retired teachers to help you protect our pensions,” the unified answer has been, “It would help if you all would speak directly to the Governor.”

Our first response to the suggestion was not positive—“Well what good would that do? He doesn’t listen; he seems unaware of our needs; he openly argues his anti-labor, anti-union, anti-collective bargaining stance, and he is ignoring the recent Illinois Supreme Court decision overturning Senate Bill 1— so why would letters from individual retired teachers (or police or firefighters) make any difference?

Because the Governor needs to hear your voice. He needs to hear our voices, one and many. If we are silent, we have failed in our advocacy. In this case, writing your congressperson isn’t the right choice—contacting the Governor is.

Hearing from us individually, not through our union reps or our sympathetic congressperson lends a new level of push back to the debate over the unbalanced budget and the Governor’s 500+ page plan to again attack our pensions and ask us to take a diminished benefit.

Your letter should be short and must be heartfelt in your defense of your contract with the State of Illinois to provide you with the pension you worked for and contributed toward all those working years. We need to show him that whatever he is doing is affecting us, our friends, and our colleagues. He has to find money and compromise to solve the problem.

A handwritten or typed snail-mail letter is more impressive than an email or a phone call, but the latter two could also be used. It is important in the subject line of the email to state what the content is about so it can be logged by staffers properly.

I encourage you to send Bruce Rauner a letter:

GOVERNOR BRUCE RAUNER                                        

207 State House                                                                          

Springfield, Illinois 62706                                                   

GOVERNOR BRUCE RAUNER

James R. Thompson Center

100 West Randolph 16-100

Chicago, IL 60601

Actually, send two letters—one to each office! The aides must read and count each letter that arrives and report to the Governor on the subject matter.

For questions, please contact: Kate Singletary, Legislative Chair of the West Lake Shore Unit, a local of the Illinois Retired Teachers Association, singletarykate@gmail.com

A Reiterated Commentary on This Blog:

Now is the time for citizens of Illinois to openly resist the way in which the state's politicians (without moral conscience) have chosen to regulate public morals and welfare. Now is the time to protest against the liars and thieves who have manufactured a financial crisis; to protest against the liars and thieves who have perpetuated a financial predicament through irresponsibility, mismanagement and corruption; to protest against the liars and thieves who have ignored moral responsibility and refused lawful remedy for the financial problems they have created. They will continue to steal more of your pension in the future. You must become a political activist —Glen Brown.