Seniors have been “engaged for two years now” and yet it remains “fairly easy to galvanize members to act,” AARP Executive Vice President Nancy LeaMond said at the Oct. 30 conference on Capitol Hill.
“Frankly, I’ve been very worried that we were going to have show-up fatigue,” she said. “That hasn’t been the case.”
Joining AARP in the messaging battle are unions, other seniors groups and Democratic-aligned political committees.
The Alliance for Retired Americans and unions mobilized 2,800 participants in 50 cities in a July 2 action against the “chained CPI,” a proposal to calculate Social Security benefits based on a slower-growing version of the Consumer Price Index.
Seniors linked arms to form human chains outside congressional district offices while lawmakers were in their home states for the July 4 holiday. Some participants draped themselves in homemade construction-paper chains.
The alliance, a nonprofit based in Washington, began as a group for retired union workers and has since broadened its membership to other seniors. It claims 4 million members and raised $7.5 million last year, according to tax documents, investing $2.6 million into government and political affairs.
“We can put sneakers on the ground,” said Richard Fiesta, the alliance’s director of government and political affairs. “It works.”