There's a protest singer - he's singin protest songs

This post is a little late, since the legislation in question already passed. But it's still a window into some of what was happening in the past month or so.

Since I was hired, there had always been some constant rumbling in the background about crazy changes Congress might make to the way student loans were issued, possibly even taking out the whole idea of third-party loans. That bill never made it out of committee, so we all figured we were all set.

The company I work for is split between collecting for the Department of Education, and collecting for third-party guarantors. The bill that the Education Committee came up with would have eliminated third-party government student loans entirely, which would have put a huge segment of my company out of business.

Then the word came down in an all-staff meeting - get back on the phones and start calling senators and representatives again, because the student finance reform bill that didn't make it out of committee just got shoved into the health care legislation as a rider.

(At the time it made no sense to me, but in hindsight I understand - the bill had to generate funds somewhere to offset the tab, and the savings projected from government not having to pay 3rd-party lenders to make up for interest variations balanced out part of the health care costs. Also, it wasn't getting passed on its own, and Obama really wanted it.)

So people duly got back on the phones during work time to contact representatives and senators in the "grassroots effort". Which, as much as one may snark at the term when encouraged by the company, you're dealing with people who have mainly high-school educations and are getting paid 12 bucks an hour base salary. There's a lot of interest in keeping those jobs if you can do them.

The company then told us they were taking "grassroots" to the next level - they were chartering buses from the two locations to go to Rochester and Buffalo to meet with senate and representative staffers and protest. All time involved - protest and travel - would be on the clock. Make signs if you want. If you have the "Save New York Jobs" t-shirts printed from the last time we were panicked about this, wear them.

I checked the weather. Sunny and beautiful, in the upper forties in mid-March. And I still had my shirt. I signed up.

There were five buses total from our office - three going to Buffalo, and two going to Rochester. I chose the Buffalo bus because that was the larger group, the bigwigs from the office were going there, and Buffalo was going to be a longer day.

So we bussed down to Buffalo, and I got a chance to really chat with one of the women on my team, which was nice. Got to talk about life, the windmill farms (she thinks they're ugly, I think they are actually quite beautiful), and the state of the world.

Then we got to Buffalo, and parked in one of the heavier industrial parts of town. The pre-selected chant was "Save our jobs", and one of our more boisterous collectors (a fellow west-coaster) ran to the front and got us chanting and screaming through sheer force of personality.

The building we were originally chanting outside was an old steel building with a sign out front about leasing space painted on to the front. As we were chanting "Save Our Jobs!" a cardboard sign came out from one of the windows the size of the window in big print saying "SAVE OUR JOBS". We all cheered when we saw it.

We chanted outside the representative office for the cameras, egged on by our west coast colleague, as people looked on from the upper floors. We cheered at people who honked at us as they passed, and ignored the people who just kept driving.

The signs were a wide range of things. Some talked about keeping New York jobs, some disparaged the health plan. I think the best one had the outline of a cat in a three-piece suit saying "Do I Look Like a Fat-Cat banker to you?" Which kind of summed up the whole situation. Yes, the banks had really screwed up, but here were decent people hoping to keep their jobs that paid a decent wage.

We got back on the bus, and went to Buffalo's downtown. We got dropped off near Shea's, and marched along the street, signs held high, moving past For Rent sign after For Rent sign, waving our signs past the HEAP office, down the tracks, and finally across from the building.

It was interesting to people watch, especially among our group. The first protest site was near a parking lot, wide open spaces. This was crowded, downtown, with lots of people from the sticks who hadn't been outside of the county in probably some time.

Lots of people were taking cell phone pics of our group, and texting friends on the tram line and asked us what was going on. It was outside of the unemployment offices as well, so our bosses also got a few questions about where our office was located, with some great disappointment that it was so far away.

In the end, I don't know if we accomplished much. The provision wasn't taken out from the health care bill, and we're now waiting on corporate to find out what happens now. But it was a good showing of people rallying to a cause, and a good day for a walk. At least it was that.