The tears come when Bianca Rivera is speaking words her mother, whose first language is Spanish, is too upset to utter. They come before a crowded theater in downtown Olympia, standing next to her mom as she clutches a prepared statement that she rushes through in order to avoid being overwhelmed. They come on the long ride home from the state Capitol with one of the event's organizers; and they come that night, when she returns a reporter's call. Rivera fears she's about to lose her home.
They are tears of uncertainty: Rivera has missed two mortgage payments, but she has an appointment with a mortgage re-adjuster next week who, for $120, might be able to help her modify the loan. They spring from want: She spent last winter choosing between heating her home or paying the bank. They spring from fear: this was the only house they'd ever known, the one she and her mom worked a collective six jobs to keep, one that her oldest child was finally proud to brings his friends to.
Her experience -- and the car driven by the organizer from the Statewide Poverty Action Network -- has brought her to the capitol grounds, where she now stands in the middle of the rotunda, near the giant seal depicting George Washington.
She pores over a few papers with her mother. They're standing at the center of a dazzling monument to democracy, and they don't know where to go next.
One main feature of the 60-day session unfolding in Olympia through March 4 is the citizens' lobby days: a chance for ordinary people to come to the Capitol and give their elected representatives a piece of their minds. Rivera was there on Mon., Jan. 18, in the 42nd year since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. The number of participants reached an all-time high this year, with an estimated 700 marchers.
They began their morning at Olympia's Capitol Theater with an "expert panel" of six people suffering the casualties of a frayed social service system.
A homeless refugee from Hurricane Katrina. A daughter who had to quit school to act as the deathbed interpreter for her sick father. The single mother of an autistic son who must comply with the state's welfare-to-work rules, but knows that child care will be more expensive than any job she could find. And Rivera -- who read a statement for her mother as the two of them stood at the podium.
Their situations are brought to life against the stark realities of the legislature's task: before March 4, they need to cut $2.6 billion from the state's budget, or find revenue to fill the gap. A second-draft budget plan proposed Jan. 9 by Gov. Chris Gregoire restored a portion of the spending but left some social programs on the table, like the state's day care subsidies for the working poor and translation services for hospitalized people who don't speak English well.
While the experts of the day did not have any specific remedies for the Legislature, they did have a will to be heard. But how? Nancy Amidei, former professor with the University of Washington School of Social Work, was there to answer that question.
Amidei's retirement is punctuated with the sorts of trainings she offered that morning to the crowded theater. Interest groups want to know how to speak effectively to elected officials.
Amidei's message to the audience was one she's repeated frequently in the first weeks of the new year as groups converge to save the programs they deem critical. Her two points: Washington's state legislature is more accessible than many others, and legislators do want to hear from everyday people. But if you try, you need to be brief and to the point, and understand that lawmakers are extraordinarily busy.
"Legislators' lives are very very uncertain. Sometimes they'll start a meeting with someone and get a knock on the door: 'You've just been called to another meeting, you have to leave,'" Says Amidei. "That happens to them all the time. We want to make sure you get across in just about a minute and a half: in 90 seconds, hit all the basic points, so if you're interrupted, you've already had a good visit."
Later in the afternoon, on a newcomer's tour of the campus' main four buildings, Amidei stops by one legislator's office. He's not here, but she chats up the woman sitting outside his closed office door. Amidei knows to be nice to the legislative aides.
"Everyone's saying don't cut, don't cut," the aide tells her, but "it's about our constitutional duty to balance the budget."
"These people are feeling dumped on," Amidei says minutes later. As the gatekeepers to the representatives' ears, "they listen to all these complaints."
She walks into the rotunda, seeing Rivera and her mother, who have plainly lost their bearings. They're standing under the capitol dome near the roped-off likeness of George Washington embedded in the floor. She directs them toward the John L. O'Brien building, where representatives from the 34th legislative district can be found; your group should be meeting with them now, she says.
Before you go, leave a message for the governor, says Amidei, pointing toward the doorway to Gregoire's office: "It takes two minutes."
The day at the capitol "was a new experience for me," said Rivera, later. "They teach you about government in high school," but to go and "see it in its creation was something different."
That same day, six senators introduced a bill mandating that banks sit down to negotiate new loan terms with borrowers at the brink of foreclosure. Mediation "would add some transparency to the process," says Statewide Poverty Action Network lobbyist Yuh-Line Niou.
It would certainly help Rivera, who says her late mortgage "is a ticking bomb."
"I don't think you should have to go to a lawyer to intervene when you're in a financial situation," she said. "Those mortgage companies should have some sense of accountability going forward."
And then she thought of her three children, ages 11 to 18, safe in the home they might have to leave soon, and remembered them all living in that car, all those apartments, when they were little, and her voice again thickened with emotion. "It was a great feeling for them to have a home after moving around," she said. "You create a home, and then it can be gone."