Thank you to all who showed up for the march. Thank you to everyone who wrote
in to their legislators and who contacted the media in one way or another.
ProjectMARCH week turned out to be great.

Yes, unfortunately there were only a few of us there this year.

But we may have found a strong supporter in one of the representatives that we
visited - for screening at age 18.

And on Thursday, Louise and I attended a White House conference and the AMAZING
Louise actually got to talk - briefly - with President Bush about needing
screening at an earlier age. He was interested enough to take her card. And he
told her that no one had ever approached him about this.

Which demonstrates what I was saying awhile back. One letter to him doesn't
even reach him. It isn't even considered an issue. Ten letters to him will
start to make the letter openers remember that they've seen this issue before.
A thousand letters, phone calls, faxes and we get added to the possible issues
to be addressed list. And the next step after that...we get brought to his
attention or his top aides.

Folks, when we visited Rep. Chet Edwards of Texas we told his aide that what we
want is a bill introduced by next March that would mandate screening be made
available from age 18 up and a fund set up for those without insurance.

We have at least two sets of ears on the Hill listening. Now we need to
deliver. This time we had over 1200 petition signatures and the aides were
impressed. Before next March we need that many from every state.

So here's the plan.

Each state needs one state coordinator. And ideally, one coordinator for each
voting district (a coordinator can certainly take on multiple districts). Under
the state coordinators we need the following committees:

Media
Medical Community
Petition
Legislative
Medical Bills Posters
Community Groups Outreach

Each committee will need to meet at least once a month and be working hard to
accomplish its goals Each state coordinator needs to meet with the committee
leaders at least once a month and once a month meet with all the other state
coordinators.

All meetings can be done online.

So, step one, who can be the coordinator for their state. You must give us a
way to contact you that we can post online - phone and email ideally. No
address is needed. Your job will be to help; get those committees built for
your state and get them moving.

If you can't take on a state coordinator position then can you take on a
committee head? If you can't take on either coordinator roles choose a
committee to be on.

If we want this to happen, now that we have legislators that are interested, we
must deliver. They can't do this for us. They can write a bill and work on
getting co-sponsors, but WE have to demonstrate that the American public, the
voters, want this and will not accept anything less.

I have to tell you, finding one and even maybe two legislators that may support
us in this amazed me. That is a break-through that lights me up like I can't
begin to tell you. And icing the cake with Louise Bates getting the ear of the
President. We have a solid launching point. This is now within reach. If we
want it bad enough.

I hate the death toll of people I knew who lost their life to this cancer. I
hate that right now there is no way I can keep my kids from ending up where my
sister was - 44 and diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer with no risk factors. I
hate the pain I see this cause. Life is tough enough to allow it to steal one
single person that we can prevent dying so simply. But for the first time since
I took up this fight, I have real hope that we can accomplish this. I knew it
was possible. But for so long I have felt like I was tilting at windmills.
Well, the windmill has fallen. This is our fight. Stand with me. Make
plans to be in DC next ProjectMARCH and work like crazy to meet the goals we
need to make this happen.

A suggestion was made that we move ProjectMARCH to the end of the month. It's a
good one. Better weather. MORE tourists in town. So it is officially moved to
the last monday in March - March 26th, 2007. Because that is right around the
Cherry Blossum festival you will need to plan to make your housing arrangements
6 months out. I'm hoping we can get someone to take on looking into housing
options and maybe the Network can swing the cost of a bus to bring people from
there into town.

Mark your calendars.

Any money spent is each individuals responsibility. CCNetwork is a 501c3 and so
cannot spend more than 4% of its budget on legislative items.


Priscilla A. Savary
Executive Director
Colorectal Cancer Network
PO Box 182, Kensington MD 20895
301-879-1500
psavary@...
www.colorectal-cancer.net
_________
Screening for All. Colon Cancer for None.
ProjectMARCH -- rarely in life do you get a chance to make major change or save
thousands of lives. March 6, 2006 you can.
http://www.colorectal-cancer.net/projectmarch.htm


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