A day at the Capital

Yesterday I volunteering at the downtown Madison Farmer's Market.  Myself and four other girls had a table set up for Panned Parenthood and we were passing out information, pins, and condoms and asking people to sign our petition. Many states are loosing funding to their Planned Parenthood and other laws are being passed that are causing clinics to shut down and women are left without things like birth control, pap smears and pre-cancerous testing. Wisconsin Planned Parenthood has lost a lot of funding and two clinics have shut down already. Our petition urges lawmakers to restore that funding: you can sign it here.

I am always nervous about hanging out with new people but one of the gals and I clicked and we set off together. We actually left the table and wandered the crowds asking people if they would sign. Which was a little scary, because I did not want anyone to tell me I was an awful person.

I was amazed by how many people approached us. We were wearing some pretty fly buttons and my pink hair tends to draw some people in. Certain older ladies and men came up and signed and talked to us about how glad they were that we were doing the work we were doing. We had a few people who were a little rude, but nothing we could not brush off with a smile.

We did have to explain to a few people that the because of the Hyde Amendment (passed in 1973), federal funds do not cover abortions. Which means Planned Parenthood does not use your tax dollars to pay for abortions. After hearing that a few more people did sign, which was good to see.

All in all I had a great time and am excited to do more for this organization. I am interviewing for an internship position with them and am signed up for the next Farmer's Market day as well. Plus I got to leave with a ton of free condoms.

Also I wanted to throw these pictures in, there is an organization and I did not catch their full name and so cannot find them on Facebook, but they put on little plays in the park and have a marching band. They did a play about Governor Weasel as a portrayal of Walker and it was great. Does anyone know their name?