by Carolyne Orazi
This year's Advocacy Day was another success. Past-President-Carolyne Orazi, Trustee-April Philips, and President-Elect Blake Rhinehart traveled to Washington DC to advocate for important issues that affect our profession. We met with each of our House Representatives: Nancy Pelosi, Jared Huffman, and Barbara Lee as well as our Senator's; Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris. At each of our sessions we met with the representative's staffers. We asked them to consider co-sponsoring the following bills: HR 1497 Water Quality Protection & Jobs Creation Act, S.1098 Transportation Alternatives Enhancement Act, and the Infrastructure Bill. We emphasized to the staffers how Landscape Architects play a vital role in solving issues regarding alternative transportation, are heavily involved in all aspects of these projects and are an excellent resource of information and knowledge. Moreover, we impressed upon them the nature of the work Landscape Architects perform on projects to improve water quality, modes of transportation as well as physical and environmental infrastructure. We received positive support from all our staffers. Our visits to Senators Harris and Feinstein was accompanied by Chapter representatives from the other three California ASLA Chapters; together we presented a mighty force.
Our Chapter would like to host an Advocacy Day in August when our representatives are not sitting in Congress. We ask if any ASLA members have projects they would like to share with our representatives, to submit them to Carolyne Orazi, corazi@asla-ncc.org or Blake Rhinehart, brhinehart@asla-ncc.org.
