NCJW-SA and Our Lawmakers: 2025

NCJW Texas Caren Edelstein Lobby Day Recap

More than forty Texas NCJW advocates came together Sunday through Tuesday for our bi-annual Lobby Day. We began Sunday evening with a group dinner at The Grove. It was great to meet members of other sections and learn about their programming and projects. 

Monday was Training Day. We heard from 3 speakers: Grace Bonilla (Texas Impact) spoke on education legislation, Emily French (Common Cause) spoke on voting rights legislation and former Senator Wendy Davis (Planned Parenthood Texas Votes) spoke on reproductive rights legislation. We also were trained in the most effective approaches for meeting with our legislators through role plays.  This exercise was useful in that it prepared us for the next day’s meetings.  Afterwards, we broke into sections to decide who would take the lead in each of the legislative meetings on our key issues: increasing access to voting, increasing women's health access, and increasing support to Texas public schools. We ended Training Day at Manuel’s Mexican restaurant.

Tuesday was the BIG DAY. We went to the State Capitol to present our issues and to give each legislator/staff member our position papersLori Stockstiel, Amy Saklad, Ann Winer, and Marsha Krassner represented our section.  We had previously scheduled meetings with many of our state representatives and/or their staff, and these meetings were, for those most part, useful getting to know one another better.