The Jan. 20 hearing turnout and excitement was wonderful. But here’s how it can be twice as good with the same number of people at the expected Senate hearing (assuming they take public testimony):
I’m not certain of the following tactics but I’ve practiced them and seen them work.
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The best kind of testimony is where you talk about what happened to you, not what you think the world should be like. Nearly everyone at the CACR hearing on Jan . 20 did the second kind instead of the first. From what I understand, we would have been way better off if folks had focused on their own experiences, many people who were in the room have had these experiences. Especially the FBI Bitcoin raids that many of the speakers suffered first hand. There was very little talk of this, and I"m guilty too.
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The other problem is that much of the testimony was duplicative, redundant. people did not generally try to be brief. They’re only going to remember one thing you say, why not figure out a way to say it in 60 seconds and preferably without even taking the stand?
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No one waived their testimony after signing up to speak. This last tactic is counterintuitive but often best…when they call you, you don’t even take the stand… you just get close to the microphone and say something like… “I waive my testimony; Carla Gericke covered it and I’d like to re-iterate her point about such and such.” Then you sit down twenty seconds after starting and the reps love you for letting them get to dinner on time.
In practice what many folks have discovered is that you don’t necessarily need to write a speech , because you may end up throwing it all out or super-summarizing it anyway.
These are the kinds of problems we want to have, but if you want to make the hearings go more our way…this is probably how.