First they came for the Iranians
Advice from a high-level staffer for a Senator:<p>There are two things that everyone concerned should be doing all the time right now, and they&#x27;re by far the most important things.<p>You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing.<p>1. 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 town halls, go to them. Go to their local offices. If you&#x27;re in DC, try to find a way to go to an event of theirs. Go to the &quot;mobile offices&quot; that their staff hold periodically (all these times are located on each congressperson&#x27;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.<p>2. But, those in-person events don&#x27;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: 2 each (DC office and your local office) to your 2 Senators &amp; your 1 Representative.<p>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&#x27;s not worth the time it took you to craft that letter).<p>Calls are what all the congresspeople pay attention to. 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. They&#x27;re also sorted by zip code and area code. Republican callers generally outnumber Democrat callers 4-1, and when it&#x27;s a particular issue that single-issue-voters pay attention to (like gun control, or planned parenthood funding, etc...), it&#x27;s often closer to 11-1, and that&#x27;s recently pushed Democratic congressmen on the fence to vote with the Republicans. In the last 8 years, Republicans have called, and Democrats haven&#x27;t.<p>So, when you call:<p>A) When calling the DC office, ask for the Staff member in charge of whatever you&#x27;re calling about (&quot;Hi, I&#x27;d like to speak with the staffer in charge of Healthcare, please&quot;) - local offices won&#x27;t always have specific ones, but they might. If you get transferred to that person, awesome. If you don&#x27;t, that&#x27;s ok - ask for their name, and then just keep talking to whoever answered the phone. Don&#x27;t leave a message (unless the office doesn&#x27;t pick up at all - then you can...but it&#x27;s better to talk to the staffer who first answered than leave a message for the specific staffer in charge of your topic).<p>B) Give them your zip code. They won&#x27;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&#x27;ll want to make sure they get&#x2F;keep your vote.<p>C) If you can make it personal, make it personal. &quot;I voted for you in the last election and I&#x27;m worried&#x2F;happy&#x2F;whatever&quot; or &quot;I&#x27;m a teacher, and I am appalled by Betsy DeVos,&quot; or &quot;as a single mother&quot; or &quot;as a white, middle class woman,&quot; or whatever.<p>D) Pick 1-2 specific things per day to focus on. Don&#x27;t go down a whole list - they&#x27;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&#x2F;taken up in the next few days, but it doesn&#x27;t really matter - even if there&#x27;s not a vote coming up in the next week, call anyway. It&#x27;s important that they just keep getting calls.<p>E) Be clear on what you want - &quot;I&#x27;m disappointed that the Senator...&quot; or &quot;I want to thank the Senator for their vote on...&quot; or &quot;I want the Senator to know that voting in _____ way is the wrong decision for our state because...&quot; Don&#x27;t leave any ambiguity.<p>F) They may get to know your voice&#x2F;get sick of you - it doesn&#x27;t matter. The people answering the phones generally turn over every 6 weeks anyway, so even if they&#x27;re really sick of you, they&#x27;ll be gone in 6 weeks.
From experience since the election: If you hate being on the phone &amp; feel awkward (which is a lot of people) don&#x27;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.