ANA members (left to right) Jay Coghlan, Ann Suellentrop, Deeps Vijh, Marylia Kelley (Tri-Valley CAREs), and Tanvi Kardile meet with Jim McConnell (Center) at National Nuclear Security Administration Headquarters during DC Days 2024.
It’s advocacy training day for 2024 DC Days participants from around the country!
Tri-Valley CAREs 2024 DC Days Team – Scott Yundt, Marylia Kelley, Barbara Dyskant, Sophia Stroud and Pam Richard (left to right) at the 2024 DC Days Award Ceremony
Your Tri-Valley CAREs team is back from a very busy, and quite successful, 2024 Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA) DC Days! About 70 participants attended an all-day issues and advocacy training before embarking on more than 60 meetings with key members of Congress, committee staff and agency officials over three days.
Everyone we met with was sent the DC Days Report, “Nuclear Abolition: an idea whose time has come” and was given our DC Days page of asks. The ANA report contains sections written by Tri-Valley CAREs’ staff (see, “Stop New Warheads and “Increase Oversight and Accountability”). The policy recommendations were developed by consensus by ANA groups before the event. These resources proved to be very useful. We received lots of positive feedback on the report, particularly in our congressional meetings!
Tri-Valley CAREs team (pictured above) attended more than 40 meetings while in DC. All five of us will be present for the Thursday, June, 20th special Tri-Valley CAREs meeting where we will give a full report out including: meeting highlights; relationship building that took place, important information learned; the follow-up we are doing; the awards that were given, and how you can take action to help further the DC Days goals. Be sure to attend!
Our DC Days meetings varied in their scope and depth. Some were with members of Congress, and some were with key defense staffers, which can also be very productive. For example, our Senior Advisor, Marylia, had a meeting with a Senate staffer who was preparing a briefing that afternoon on the new nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missile for her boss on the Armed Services Committee. She was eager to hear our reasons for opposing this new weapon, and took special note of both our ANA recommendations and the technical citations we were able to offer.
Our Executive director, Scott, met with Representative John Garamendi’s (CA-8) staff member Robert Hurd, who works on the for the Congressman on issues pertaining to his role as Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee. Among other topics, Scott discussed our proposal to create a “Nunn-McCurdy Act”-like process for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in order to rein in that agency’s massive cost overruns and force them to submit more accurate cost estimates and schedules. (Note: The Nunn-McCurdy Act currently binds the Defense Department but not the NNSA – yet.)
Following closely on Scott’s DC Days meeting, Representative Garamendi submitted an “en banc” amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that directs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct research on a process that would bind NNSA. And the amendment passed! Your Tri-Valley CAREs team will follow up and provide language aimed at turning the GAO research into law.
And, these are just two examples out of many.
There were also many meetings where we learned important information that we will be blogging and emailing our membership about soon. For now, we hope to see you virtually on Thursday, June 20th at 7:30pm Pacific Time. Circle your calendar now.
