Thanks for coming. Hey! Thank you for coming.
Hey, it's Casey here at the 2020 Day of Action at The Planetary Society.
We're just about to get started with our training.
We've got over a hundred people here in the room. You can feel the energy.
We're going to make some differences now in space science and exploration
here in the nation's capitol.
Hey everyone, welcome to our 2020 Day of Action.
We have a chance to really... to make a difference.
And you guys are going to be part of it.
Thank you all so much for coming. Thank you.
Here's what I want you to do, and this is going to be the same for your next meeting:
Use your legislative prep sheets, compare notes, think about the meeting.
What are the best, of the talking points that we have, what's the best strategy to start with this meeting.
And have someone write down and plan for all of you
who's going to speak first. Who's going to speak about any particular topics.
This is your chance to get really comfortable with these talking points.
I'm going to be walking around, Brendan is going to be walking around.
If you have questions just come find us.
I think it's just incredible how many people have come from across the country
to be here right now to advocate for space.
I'm just so impressed.
I'm Makayla Healy. I traveled all the way from Arizona
to talk to my representatives today.
I'm super nervous, little bit, first meeting of the day.
-How you feeling?
-Yep, feel a little nervous.
We are here at Debbie Lesko's office.
Really excited to talk to her as a constituent and tell her what's important to me.
Which is space.
My name is Mari Takahashi I'm from Culver City, California.
So my husband Peter and I, we flew from Los Angeles to Washington D.C.
just for this. Just the Day of Action.
We're going into our first meeting right now and it's with Kamala Harris.
We did our training so we should be good to go.
Yeah. I think if anything we're just excited to talk about space.
I feel like kids used to say that they want to be astronauts a lot.
Having that for our generation, being able to see people step on the Moon
and then someday on Mars is the most inspiring thing for me.
I think we're gonna do ok.
-Good luck.
-Good luck. Break a leg.
My name is Afshan Malik and I'm from Buffalo, New York.
My name is Elliot ravaRauba, I'm from Latham, New York.
It went really well, he was very knowledgeable about things that NASA is doing
so it was nice to geek out with him a little bit.
We mentioned to him the planetary science caucus and he seemed really interested in it.
Especially the fact that there's no New York members.
Like all of us from New York feel like that's a shame.
This is my first time doing this. It actually seems easier than I expected.
I keep coming back because I'm a huge advocate for space.
I think it's incredibly important not just to me, in my life, but for my eventual children.
I fly down on from Syracuse to Washington every year because I get to see the same faces
When I walk into the training session with Casey and it's so great to see that
I know I have that passion to come down every year
and it's so great to see that people and my friends fly from all corners of the country.
It was really great to come here and learn from people who have the passion
that they've been coming for four years now?
You know, we're definitely going to come again, but what's been a lot of fun is
having a hand in this future of space.
One-and-done. Got six more to go.
Yeah! We did it, we did it. First meeting! First meeting done.
We just left Senator Romney's office and I'm from Utah so he is my senator.
It went really well.
There's been varying degrees their knowledge of planetary science and exploration.
She didn't know a lot about what was going on,
so we got to talk about Mars 2020, everything that we're passionate about.
Everyone is very, very nice and very excited to hear what we have to say.
We're about to go into Brad Sherman's office, my congressman.
Let's go.
-Good to see you!
-Congressman, great to see you.
Two questions that everybody asks. Everybody asks:
Where did we come from? You know what are we doing here?
And the other question is are we alone?
So today we had 115, I think with us it's 117, people
from The Planetary Society who paid their own way to come here.
It's really gratifying.
We talked to, what - five representatives
and all of them were interested, all were excited about NASA and space
so it's definitely a positive thing.
We are done with our Day of Action.
Busy! It was raining and cold, but we powered through it
and it turned out to be a really wonderful experience.
Thanks you guys, thanks for coming and advocating.
Blow it up!
Another one.
There's 115 of us who are on Capitol Hill today talking about how important space is
and how much we love it. How dope is this?
(cheering)
