Today's Indivisible Bracing For Impact Call
I thought I knew how to call my elected officials. Turns out, I didn't know much
It’s Thursday, which means at 12pm PST I was on the Indivisible Zoom Call. They happen every Thursday and they are a big part of my coping strategy this administration. If you haven’t attended one yet, sign up to get updates so you can register for the next one!
In the meantime, today was all about calling your electeds, or, at least, that was the part of the call I focused on. Turns out, I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did.
Here are some my take aways:
When you have the option, the best choice is to walk directly into your electeds’ office and speak to a staffer in person, especially if your electeds’ mailbox is full. Also setting up meetings in person and going to their town halls, which if they don’t have, is another thing to call about and demand they do.
The second best choice is always calling during working hours, calling after hours can still have an impact, but it kind of depends on who the intern is whose job it is to review the voicemail. They could be someone who marks everyone down, or they could be someone who doesn’t think they get paid enough for that. And with a voicemail, you can’t follow up if you haven’t heard back from your elected, cause you didn’t get the name of your staffer.
Only call about one issue at a time. When you call about multiple issues, they will likely only mark down the easiest issue to mark down and ignore the rest. This one hurt. I was doing that all the time.
It’s about numbers. We need monumentally more tallies from Dems than Republicans and right now, for every call one Dem makes, four Republicans have called about the same issue, but when it’s a really important issue it’s more like 11 Republicans. If you wonder why Dem electeds might not vote the way you want them to, this is one of the biggest reasons.
Each action needs to be its own call. That means that you shouldn’t call twice urging your elected to vote for or against (it’s going to mostly be against for the next two years) a bill in committee, but you can call again when you’re asking them to vote no on the floor or filibuster in the Senate, for instance. They need to know how we feel about every step of the process.
You must give your name and full address for your comment to have the best chance of being tallied. Also, always ask for the name of the staffer or intern you are speaking to and say you’d like a written response (that means email, no trees were harmed in the building of this democracy). You might not get one, but this gives more accountability.
While you might never learn how your call to your Republican elected had an impact, if enough people call, it WILL. When they have private meetings with just members of their caucus, there is a very good chance they will say “I got X number of calls against this bill, I need to win my next election, so can we please change this part of it?” It’s frustrating, cause you can’t see the impact, but just trust me, it’s there.
Set up a group chat with 10+ people in your district or state where you are all calling at the same time. “We got 20 calls in the past 10 minutes” has more impact than “We got 20 calls today.” Phones ringing off the hook is an audible way to show constituents need the elected to pay attention.
If your elected is doing the right thing, THANK THEM, every single time. It will change the mood in the office and that will make a difference.
Even if your Senator is a good Dem, there is still more that can be done. Ask them to withhold unanimous consent (there are a lot of bills we don’t even hear about because they pass with 100% support) and to hold quorum calls as often as possible (a voice attendance, basically, and it dramatically slows down any activity in that body.)
Democrats want praise, so if your Dem elected isn’t being forceful enough, TELL THEM. They want you to like them so they can get reelected, so when you tell them what you want, if enough people are saying the same thing, they are quite likely to listen.
This is a lot more info than I ever had before, and I thought I was an expert. I have a lot of changes to make in how I call my electeds and I assume many of you do too.
And if you can’t make phone calls, you can always send letters or bother them on social media, but, unfortunately, it seems like calling has significantly more of an impact than anything else. Maybe if you can’t call, you can help organize others to do so.
Your voice is your superpower, but only when you use it!
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