Progressives TodayWashington has been one of the target states for Bloomberg and his gun control efforts. Using strategies similar to Obama’s Organizing For America, combined with a multi million dollar public relations push, they were able to successfully pass a ballot initiative that would mandate background checks for private firearm transactions (though, by a considerably smaller margin than their initial polling).
So who are the folks working behind the scenes to make this happen? You probably won’t be surprised that many of them are from out of state, shipped in to “organize”.
Let’s start off with Meera Bhardwaj. She has been the lead organizer forEverytown/Moms Demand Action in Washington for about a year and a half. She still uses her 402 area code phone number, which is a Nebraska number, which is where she went to college from 2007 to 2010.
From Nebraska, she was dispatched to North Carolina in 2012 to work as a field organizer on the Obama campaign, which she quickly parlayed into a gig with Moms Demand Action shortly after the organization was formed.
At some point in the summer of 2013, as I 594 was launching into full signature gathering mode, Bhardwaj was called up from North Carolina and dispatched to Washington, and promoted to statewide organizer.
She was very active organizing throughout 2014, helping to pass I 594.
As of February 10th, she is still the statewide organizer for Bloomberg.
Geoff Potter is the “Communications Director” for Washington Alliance For Gun Responsibility, which received $2,625,000 from Everytown, MAIG, and a direct contribution from Bloomberg himself in 2014.
Mr. Potter has a history that put him at Syracuse University and Iona College in New York, as well as working for Hillary Clinton’s staff in D.C. when she was a Senator. He operated in Minnesota in 2008, before landing in Seattle, where he bounced around between a few short term gigs and eventually ended up with WAGR.
Lisa Nikodem is an “Organizing Manager” for Moms Demand Action in Washington. She has spent time working for PIRG in Eugene, Oregon and Chicago as an organizer and canvass director. While in the windy city, she was a Campaign Director for a group called Environment Illinois. She’s relatively new to Moms Demand Action, as she’s only been working for them in Washington since January. Ironic that someone from the murder capitol of the U.S. comes into another state to lecture them about gun laws.
Emily Parzybok is a “Community Relations Manager” forCenter For Gun Responsibility, after previously running the Get-Out-The-Vote operation for WAGR in the 2014 election. It looks like she was originally from Washington, but moved to Boston at one point and largely stated out of politics until 2014. After stints in Nambia and Boulder, CO, she ended up back in Washington and went to work for the Bloomberg shill organizations.
At least Cheryl Stumbo, chief petitioner of I 594, is actually from Washington and has lived there for some time. Though. Ms. Stumbo is a marketing expert, like Shannon Watts and Jenn Lynch, so of course she knows how to package up the message and sell it to the masses.
To summarize, regardless of the state you’re in, when you see the MDA/Everytown people in the media and at events, it is highly likely that they are only in your state temporarily, to impose the wishes of their billionaire master, and they will soon be moving on to a different state after their damage is done.
http://www.progressivestoday.com/meet-bloombergs-out-of-state-operatives-in-washington/