Originally published on the CGS blog on March 23, 2009.
Thanks to everyone who came to our 2009 Annual Meeting at Gallaudet University last weekend! We had a great time, applauding the achievements of our supporters during the past year; going over goals for the upcoming year; and looking at some long-range issues that we may want to begin working on.
Congressman Joe Sestak (7th-PA) made time to talk to our supporters about his goals for international engagement on Thursday, answering questions listening to our concerns. Many other Members of Congress arranged for their foreign policy staffers to meet with our members, to discuss the ICC, the Law of the Sea, and CEDAW. On Friday, we had a series of incredible panels, begining with a discussion of nuclear disarmament and peacekeeping. Joe Cirincionne of the Ploughshares Fund, Ann Richard of the International Rescue Committee, Peter Yeo of the U.N. Foundation’s Better World Campaign, and our own CEO Don Kraus discussed a variety of policy initiative and fielded questions.
Easily the most animated discussion was the panel on whether the world is ready for an elected United Nations parliament. Legal expert Andrew Strauss, CGS Minnesota chapter leader Joe Schwartzberg, Faye Leone of the World Federalist Movement, Argentine parliament member Fernando Iglesias and Jeffrey Laurenti of the Century Foundation all debated the advantages and problems of setting up a global assembly.
We want to thank them, as well as all our other great speakers: Congressman Joe Sestak, Eric Schwartz, Gillian Sorensen, Sarah Albert, John Washburn, Heather Hamilton, Margaret Hayes, Joseph Cirincione, Anne Richard, Peter Yeo, Tyson Slocum, Hilary French, Jason Patlis, Morton Halperin, Elisa Massimino, Bassam Haddad and Susan Myers for taking the time to talk to us last weekend.
We’ll be posting videos of many of the panels over the next few days, as well as summaries of some of the discussions and speeches, so keep checking here for updates. We now have the largest group ever of elected officials who support our goals, but the world economic crisis is taking up much of their attention.It’s up to us to make sure that our issues stay in the spotllight and to generate the political will that will allow our elected representatives to support our goals.
