Gearing Up Grassroots Activities
December 21, 2010

Hi, I’m Gene Barr, vice president of the Pennsylvania Chamber. Welcome to this month’s Pennsylvania Chamber Minute.

Last month, we looked at the outcome of the 2010 general election and the business community’s resulting opportunity to realize meaningful progress on a legislative agenda to create jobs and secure economic prosperity.

Now, I want to talk about an exciting grassroots initiative that will be a key component of our advocacy efforts in the new session, with the goal of engaging citizen activists in the public policy debate.

This initiative is called Citizens to Protect PA Jobs.

Now more than ever, having an effective grassroots component that informs and engages the public is essential to legislative success.  For several years, organized labor, environmental groups and the trial bar have been able to draw in the public with their stories to aid in passing their legislative agendas. Pennsylvania’s business community must do the same.

The overall message of Citizens to Protect PA Jobs is simple: when businesses add jobs, people prosper. To drive this message home, we need to make sure Pennsylvanians understand how public policy decisions ultimately impact job creation.

The track record of successes through Citizens to Protect PA Jobs on several recent federal and state issues clearly shows what can be achieved with a concentrated and sustained effort. We have gained more than 65,000 active subscribers and nearly 1,600 social media followers on Facebook and Twitter.

Over the past year, more than 1,500 letters and emails were sent to stop union card check legislation, energy mandates, lawsuit abuse and increased business taxes.

Now we have a chance to be even more effective and move the business agenda forward. We’ll engage Citizens to Protect PA Jobs when lawmakers need legislative backing, and we’ll be ready to send a clear signal when policies under consideration are not in the best interest of job creation in the Commonwealth.

But we need your help to ensure that we have the resources needed to ensure the initiative’s success on the shared goal of enacting policies across the broad-spectrum of issue areas that will make the Commonwealth a great place to live, work and play.

To learn more, visit the website or email me. And encourage your family, friends and employees to visit the site and get involved.

Thank you for your continued support. And thank you for spending a minute of your time with the Pennsylvania Chamber…The statewide voice of business.

Have a safe and happy holiday season.