Springfield, Illinois

Now, I can finally say that I’ve been to more than one city in the United States, although I still cannot say that I’ve been to more than one state.

This week I’ve been to Springfield.  It is the capital of the state of Illinois, in which Chicago is situated.  Having been to Chicago, Springfield seems much quieter and calmer, even tough the place I’ve been to – the state Capitol wasn’t that calm.  The main aim of my Springfield trip, was to understand better how the political system here works, what is lobbying and to take part in the lobbying done on behalf of the Chicago Coalition for the homeless.  I did this to understand better what we’re speaking of in our community organizing class, which as I explained in one of my earlier blogs, is something very organised here in the States.

The capitol as seen from the western side

The capitol is quite impressive, with its large dome towering over Springfield, marble floors and walls, painted and stuccoed ceilings and bronze bass reliefs.  I wouldn’t define the building as beautiful, more ostentatious I would say.  It is in this place that the legislation for the State of Illinois is developed and enacted.  It is were the decisions are taken.  Thus it is also the place where many of the lobbyists come to.

It was explained to me that the term lobbyist comes from the lobby, the space were those who want to speak to the representatives wait.  People wait here, with the chance of meeting such representative, with the aim to speak to him/her and convince him/her to vote in a particular way.

I was impressed by the amount of people rushing from one place to the other trying to catch up with these legislators and speak to them.  There were quite a good number of organisations, each one of them trying to get the representatives to support their cause.  I imagine it can get quite competitive, especially when different organisations would try to pressure the same person to vote in opposite directions.

There are different types of lobbyists, as well.  There are the professional lobbyists who would be more discreet and whose power would be in the financing they represent.  Then there are the community organizations, whose power lies in the amount of people they gather.  These would generally have coloured T-shirts to make them immediately recognizable, and the sense would be that the place was flooded with people asking for the same thing.  For this reason this large group would be split up in a number of smaller groups each targeting a number of representatives.  The group I was with, spoke to a representative and a senator.  I believe that the first meeting was very positive, but the senator seemed quite evasive to me.

So basically that’s what lobbying consists of.  Generally at the end, one would also ask for a sort of commitment from the legislator.  The whole thing seemed to me like a big market, where everyone was trying to sell his product.  I don’t know where’s the connection but I remembered of that story in the Bible when Jesus went to the temple and found a market and was furious.  Maybe because it seemed to me that democracy might have been reduced to a market.

Anyway the lobbying was soon over, and we headed over to lunch and then to the long trip back home.  All in all I enjoyed this experience.  And, by the way I didn’t meet the Simpsons, but I found that Abraham Lincoln was from here.


P.S. With the weather getting colder - (to a degree comparable to what I'm used to in Christmas at home), I've decided to finally gift myself with a new camera.  It's one of those inexpensive Canon point and shoot.  I think it was very good value for money.