California Desert Protection Act
As a student activist, I helped pass the California Desert Protection Act in 1994, which created Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Parks. I worked with Elden Hughes and helped mobilize Sierra Student Coalition members in a concentrated phone campaign aimed at Congress.
The California Desert Protection Act was the first time I saw, up close, how a small group of organized people can move Congress.
The fight went back years. The activist Elden Hughes had been mapping the proposed park boundaries since 1988, walking the desert to document what deserved protection. By the early 1990s the bill was written but stuck — one of those pieces of legislation everyone agreed with and no one prioritized.
What we could offer was bodies and phones. Through the Sierra Student Coalition, we organized students across the country into a concentrated calling campaign aimed at the senators who were wavering. The Los Angeles Times described one such effort as a 'dorm storm': the first 200 callers were told the senator would not be voting; the second 200 were told his staff was looking for him and he might be changing his mind; the third 200 were told he would vote. He did, and the bill passed.