We spoke with the staff of Senator Feinstein. Here's what we learned.

On Friday, February 26, 2021 members of Indivisible SF joined other Indivisibles from CA to attend a Zoom meeting with the Sen Feinstein’s chief of staff, David Grannis. The meeting was organized by our friends at Indivisible East Bay.

We had a packed agenda and raised our most urgent issues with the Sen’s staff, including the passing of the COVID relief (American Rescue Plan) legislation in the Senate.

We learned that the Senator strongly supports passing this legislation. She is also in support of an increase in the minimum wage. While this provision will likely be stripped out of the Senate version of the COVID relief bill, Sen Feinstein is committed to get this passed in the Senate in a stand alone or “must pass” legislation in the near future.

We also inquired about the Senator's position on important legislation aimed to expand and protect democracy in the US. At a time when over 250 bills are being passed at the state level to make voting harder, and when many Republican politicians have altogether rejected democracy, bold action from the Senate is needed. The bills we asked about included S1, the For The People Act (the Senate equivalent of HR1), as well as legislation such as HR4 to protect voting rights.

Through her roles on the Rules and Judiciary committees, Senator Feinstein will be directly involved in passing S1 through the Senate. She will co-sponsor S1, which is good news. When we asked how she plans to pass this law if/when Republican senators will filibuster the process, we did not get a firm answer. We believe our continuous pressure will be critical in ensuring that Sen Feinstein will choose to defend policy over procedure and vote as needed to reform/remove the filibuster in order to have these democracy defending bills passed.