Release Date: April 30, 2009

A hearty thank you goes out to all of the affiliates who worked double and triple time to recruit more than 800 Planned Parenthood, staff, volunteers and supporters to come to Planned Parenthood Capitol Day 2009. Your incredible efforts make this the largest Planned Parenthood Capitol Day ever! We lobbied lawmakers, we shared stories and we recharged our batteries at this day-long event.

Participants came from as far as San Diego and Eureka to cheer a host of speakers at a morning rally including a fantastic theater group from Humboldt called the Spare Change Theatre Troupe. They were greeted by local legislators who not only spoke at the rally but welcomed us into their offices for meeting.

Longtime Planned Parenthood champion Hannah-Beth Jackson energized the rally crowd as master of ceremonies for the day. Jason Warner a health educator and Danielle Nava, Director of Public Affairs, told their story about the recent decision by the Orange County Board of Supervisors to eliminate funding to Planned Parenthood health education programs.  The program was topped off by a performance from a Hip-Hop dance troupe from Sacramento’s Studio T.

We had a lot of legislative interest at all of the interesting booths set up by the nine affiliates at our health education fair on the North Steps.

An extra thank you goes to all of the affiliates who not only brought attendees but did double duty as presenters as well. Annie Lundahl, who was the lead organizer of the event, will have a debrief on her next grassroots call at 10 a.m., May 6^th. If you can’t be on the call or are afraid that you may forget things before the call please either call/e-mail Annie ahead of time or write some of it down in preparation for the call.

Again, thank you to all of you for your hard working making Capitol Day an incredible success!

Jason Warner addresses the Capitol Day crowd.