You Better call Tyrone — or Whomever Your Congress Person Is…
Keep calling Capitol Hill folks — the elected are forced to listen. Don’t just fill out and online petition and think your work is done — all outreach matters. We need a sustained approach to advocate for what we like and resist what we don’t like.
How easy can it be? It’s this simple: Call the Capitol Hill switchboard regularly: 202–224–3121. Call the White House comment line regularly: 202–456–1414. Tell them what you want and don’t want. Tweet about it. Find Congressional social media and direct numbers here.
And here’s an app to help contact the elected.
And, if you want to write a letter to the editor in your local paper, too, here are tips from the OpEd Project.
So, you’re a high achiever and want to learn more about bills they are considering (beyond what’s in the headlines)? Here’s a tool for you.
Variations of the post, below, have appeared on social media and it is mobilizing folks. It offers additional tools & messaging examples to help us stay involved between marches and protests. This important activism is needed to help us grow stronger in building a better democracy that supports us all. We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines while politicians do what they want — often without taking our voice into account.
The post is longer than 140 characters, because it requires thoughtful engagement, not just a quick fix (which also has importance in public discourse -good and bad). Consider using this as a helpful primer on what to do when calling or visiting elected officials in their home offices or on the Hill (again, the Capitol Hill number is 202–224–3121). Similar strategies can be used when talking with your city council, mayor, state senator and governor. Remember, these folks work for YOU, so your employees need to hear from you! It only takes a handful of calls to offices to get Congress to pay attention. Imagine the impact of half of the people who marched (or wanted to march) on January 21, 2017 placed calls to their elected officials daily (or weekly, or monthly) — it would be AMAZING!
[If you want to share this, please copy and paste, so it goes viral and stays on our radar.]
From a high-level staffer for a Senator:
There are two things that all Democrats (and Independents, Greens, Libertarians, etc) should be doing all the time right now, and they’re by far the most important things.
- The best thing you can do to be heard and get your congressperson to pay attention is to have face-to-face time — if they have townhalls, go to them. Go to their local offices. If you’re in DC, try to find a way to go to an event of theirs. Make an appointment to meet with her/him. Go to the “mobile offices” that their staff hold periodically (all these times are located on each congressperson’s website). When you go, ask questions. A lot of them. And push for answers. The louder and more vocal and present you can be at those the better.
2. But, those in-person events don’t happen every day. So, the absolute most important thing that people should be doing every day is calling.
You should make 6 calls a day (or weekly or monthly, whatever your schedule allows — just do it): 2 each (DC office and your local office) to your 2 Senators & your 1 Representative.
The staffer was very clear that any sort of online contact basically gets immediately ignored, and letters pretty much get thrown in the trash (unless you have a particularly strong emotional story — but even then it’s not worth the time it took you to craft that letter).
Calls are what all the congress people pay attention to — but, we have see the power of Twitter, too.
Every single day, the Senior Staff and the Senator get a report of the 3 most-called-about topics for that day at each of their offices (in DC and local offices), and exactly how many people said what about each of those topics. Similar processes happen with congress. They’re also sorted by zip code and area code. She said that Republican callers generally outnumber Democrat callers 4–1, and when it’s a particular issue that single-issue-voters pay attention to (like gun control, or planned parenthood funding, etc…), it’s often closer to 11–1, and that’s recently pushed Republican congressmen on the fence to vote with the Republicans. In the last 8 years, Republicans have called, and Democrats haven’t.
So, when you call:
A) When calling the DC office, ask for the Staff member in charge of whatever you’re calling about (“Hi, I’d like to speak with the staffer in charge of Healthcare, please”) — local offices won’t always have specific ones, but they might. If you get transferred to that person, awesome. If you don’t, that’s ok — ask for their name, and then just keep talking to whoever answered the phone. Don’t leave a message (unless the office doesn’t pick up at all — then you can…but it’s better to talk to the staffer who first answered than leave a message for the specific staffer in charge of your topic).
B) Give them your zip code. They won’t always ask for it, but make sure you give it to them, so they can mark it down. Extra points if you live in a zip code that traditionally votes for them, since they’ll want to make sure they get/keep your vote.
C) If you can make it personal, make it personal. “I voted for you in the last election and I’m worried/happy/whatever” or “I’m a teacher, and I am appalled by Betsy DeVos,” or “as a single mother” or “as a white, middle class woman,” or whatever.
D) Pick 1–2 specific things per day to focus on. Don’t go down a whole list — they’re figuring out what 1–2 topics to mark you down for on their lists. So, focus on 1–2 per day. Ideally something that will be voted on/taken up in the next few days, but it doesn’t really matter — even if there’s not a vote coming up in the next week, call anyway. It’s important that they just keep getting calls.
E) Be clear on what you want — ”I’m disappointed that the Senator…” or “I want to thank the Senator for their vote on…” or “I want the Senator to know that voting in _____ way is the wrong decision for our state because…” Don’t leave any ambiguity.
F) They may get to know your voice/get sick of you — it doesn’t matter. The people answering the phones generally turn over every 6 weeks anyway, so even if they’re really sick of you, they’ll be gone in 6 weeks.
From experience since the election: If you hate being on the phone & feel awkward (which is a lot of people) don’t worry about it — there are a bunch of scripts (Indivisible has some, there are lots of others floating around these day.) After a few days of calling, it starts to feel a lot more natural. Put the 6 numbers in your phone (all under P — Politician. An example is McCaskill MO, Politician McCaskill DC, Politician Blunt MO, etc…) which makes it really easy to click down the list each day.
A special note for D.C. residents who don’t have a voting representative in the U.S. Senate. Learn more about the District of Columbia’s Taxation Without Representation.
*Advice to DC Residents: “I live in DC, with no voting representation — what do I do??” I’ve been calling senators on committees who are dealing with nominations. I figure their job is to represent all of us, and where staffers ask for my zip code, I give it to them and politely say D.C. has no senators. (For some I’d like to say, “and also your boss thinks it’s his/her business to f*** with the District’s democratically passed laws.”) It’s not perfect, but it’s better than not calling, and some don’t ask for zip code/location at all.
