Many of my readers are interested in opposing the Trump administration. I’d like to suggest they look into 5calls.org.
Calling your representatives is one strategy for influencing their votes. If a representative gets a lot of calls about an issue, they’re likely to believe that their constituents care a lot about it. They are afraid to go against what their constituents want, because that means that you might vote for their opponent (either in the primary or the general election). Phone calls are generally considered better than emails, because they are difficult.
5calls.org makes calling your representatives very easy. You enter your address, and then it provides phone numbers for your representatives. There are a variety of issues on the sidebar: for instance, you might be interested in calling about a proposed bill that puts more limits on the President’s ability to engage in a nuclear first strike, a Senate investigation of Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia, or calling your governor to encourage them to protect immigrant rights. For each issue, it provides you with a script. All you have to do is say the script. For me, this reduces my phone anxiety a great deal.
Personally, some of the issues seem to me to involve rather poor prioritization skills: for instance, I am not particularly opposed to the nomination of Scalia II: The Scaliaing to the Supreme Court, and a while back one of the issues you could call about was public lands potentially being given to the states. However, you do not have to call about those issues! I think they try to do scripts for a wide variety of issues that people who oppose Trump could potentially be concerned about, so that people with a lot of different political opinions can use the website. Just ignore the things you don’t care about. Fortunately, the Trump administration does enough ridiculous things that you aren’t going to run out of phone calls.
I suggest doing some research on the issue you’re calling about to make sure that you really care about it and agree with 5calls.org’s position. In my experience, 5calls.org has done a pretty good job of highlighting the most urgent Trump-related issues, so this is also a sustainable way of staying updated on the news without being burned out by the continual stream of “Trump is an authoritarian dictator destroying America!” accompanied by no concrete action one can do to help. It might also be a good idea to look up your representative’s opinion on the issue, so that you can thank them if they have a good opinion. (Representatives like positive feedback too!)
The name “5 Calls” comes from their proposed goal of five calls a day. However, you definitely don’t have to do five calls a day! Personally, I have set a goal of one voicemail or conversation with a staffer daily. (This is slightly different from a phone call because Senator Feinstein’s staffers never pick up the damn phone.) I find that, including research, this usually takes me five or ten minutes.
Good content.
In the spirit of breathing down your representative’s neck, I’m plugging this for the peeps who haven’t seen it already: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5855a354cd0f68bab2089b40/t/5867cd26be65940ffdeeac1e/1483197741124/IndivisibleGuide_2016-12-31_v1.pdf
Badgering at town halls was arguably the most effective tactic of the Tea Party, but of course these tactics exist in tandem with the telephone squad (and also, people should pick what’s tailored to their taste and talents, there’s not a single most effective strategy).
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“(Representatives like positive feedback too!)”
This understates the utility of positive calls and letters. They’re an important tool for your representative to act on the things they agree with you on – there’s power for representatives who can brandish a sheaf of letters and call transcripts in support of their position. If you agree with your representative, give them more power this way.
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I’d be a bit wary about following the scripts, unless they provide *lots* of opportunities to customize. It may work for the first guy, possibly the second if the representative and their staff got short memory and/or poor internal communication. But after that, you’ll likely just get filed as “one of those guys” and ignored, much like you would do with unsolicited phone advertising.
But I guess calling to thank them for a decision you like, especially if it was controversial, and especially especially if it was against party lines will always be welcome, even if you’re #100 to call.
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For things like this, my understanding is that they’re looking to tally numbers of people calling to support/oppose a particular
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(fucking web forms)
…a particular bill or policy or whatever. Sticking to a script helps whichever staffer picks up the phone figure out what box to check. They’re not going to just go “ugh, another of these” and hang up on you.
By all means thank representatives if you think they did a particularly good thing, but in terms of affecting outcomes rather than reacting to them, “I support Measure 123” is the most direct way to do it.
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In my misspent youth, I spent a summer answering calls for a congressperson. While I don’t know how other people did it, I was under very strict instructions to note down the issue each caller was calling about and probably would have gotten in trouble for ignoring people because they seemed to be repetitive.
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This is consistent with lots of other advice I’ve seen from other former congressional staffers on the Internet. (And it makes sense – congresspeople mostly aren’t looking for new information about what is the best policy, they’re looking for information about what their constituents care about.)
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