INPIRG wants to make Senator Evan Bayh their hero.
Thursday,
members of the Indiana Public Interest Research Group stood outside
Ballantine Hall with an 8-foot cut-out of the Indiana Democrat. Bayh’s
cut-out wore the uniform of 1990s TV environmental cartoon hero Captain
Planet.
Passers-by were encouraged to have their picture taken
with the image.
“It’s a more creative way than sending him a
letter,” said INPIRG intern and IU senior Brodie Burgess.
It’s
part of INPIRG’s campaign to encourage Bayh to support the American
Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.
The act is intended to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 as well as provide
incentives for greener cars, homes, jobs and technology, according to
OpenCongress.org.
The
bill is in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, of
which Bayh is a member. INPIRG worries the bill will become weakened in
the committee.
The group wants to put all the photos on a
Facebook group and invite Bayh to join.
They also plan to put photos
in a scrapbook and use them to lobby Bayh later in the year.
INPIRG
expected more than a hundred people to have their picture taken by the
end of the four-hour demonstration, Burgess said.
“Indiana is an
environmentally stunted state,” Burgess said. “Coal is not the answer
for the future.”
