Californians For High Speed Rail Launches Grassroots Organizing Effort
After a year in which anti-HSR activists began organizing to try and overturn the results of the 2008 election, HSR supporters are finally fighting back. Our vehicle is Californians For High Speed Rail. Founded in 2005, CA4HSR has spent the last few years working behind the scenes in Sacramento to ensure high speed rail gets funded, and has been deeply involved in the planning process for HSR. But now it’s time to organize the Californians who voted for Prop 1A and still support this project into a movement to ensure the project survives and thrives.
Today CA4HSR began that work by launching our statewide grassroots organizing effort. We’re beginning with a letter to the State Senate Transportation Committee:
Dear Senators:
We write to ask you to uphold the will of the voters and get high speed rail built for California. In 2008 a majority of Californians approved high speed rail via Prop 1A because we believed that the planned high speed rail system is critical to the economic future and quality of life for all Californians. Unfortunately some of those who opposed Prop 1A have spent the past year spreading misinformation about high speed rail and trying to create the impression that communities across the state oppose it. We expect you to reject these efforts as being unrepresentative of the true views of California voters.
We continue to support high speed rail and expect you to provide strong leadership by helping the high speed rail project quickly move toward construction and operation. Many elements of project planning need to be completed, and an effective organizational structure must be created to oversee this multi-billion dollar bidding and construction project. We ask you to use your oversight role to help the Authority build up capacity to manage such a large undertaking. With the immediate need for job creation, and the looming threat of rising oil prices and global warming, the economic future of our state is dependent on the success of the California high speed rail project.
We ask you to pledge to work together with the California High Speed Rail Authority, communities across the state, and supporters like us to implement the will of the voters and build high speed rail consistent with the provisions of Prop 1A.
We’re going to deliver this to the committee as a show of support for HSR. Click here to add your name. Certainly one letter won’t change the landscape, but it’s a necessary start for our organizing efforts, which will soon include activism on federal funding and other important HSR topics.
You can help not only by signing the letter, but by becoming a member of CA4HSR. You can find us on Facebook and on Twitter as well.
Certainly there’ll be a lot more for CA4HSR to do, both online and offline. This is just a start. But we are determined to make 2010 the year HSR supporters strike back. We need your help to make it happen.
