Hart Senate Office Building, via goldberg
In addition to snail-mailing Congress, I’ve telephoned elected officials (in both cases, I activist-ed in favor of a genuine public option for health care — er, health insurance reform!).
For me, calling Congress was an intimidating task at first. Maybe you know about the infamous Milgram experiment where research participants were asked to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to others — to actors pretending to be learners; the shocks were fake, but the participants didn’t know that.
Despite the screaming and the heart-pain complaints from the actors, despite the actors banging on the divider wall and pleading, most participants allowed the technician-coat experimenter to goad them into pressing not just the extreme intensity shock and Danger: Severe Shock buttons, but finally the XXX button that resulted in the actors’ silence. (Several participants laughed nervously or cried throughout; the experiment has been repeated with the same results as recently as 2009; researchers have used a real-life puppy, too, wondering if perhaps the participants figured out the shockee was an actor — no, all participants in that one killed the puppy.) Stanley Milgram explained these results in terms of conformity and fearful obedience to authority; I think whatever the reasons are, they lie behind patients’ fear of asking doctors questions (for example), and also my initial fear of phoning Congress!
Anyway. Calling Congress members became easier after I did it a few times. Aides answer (rarely do Congress members), and without exception I found them friendly, if rushed. They want you to get to the point, and you should. Though there are scripts online for various causes, I wrote out a paragraph for what I’d say, so that I wouldn’t sound like an astroturfer‘s employee. Each paragraph matched the structure of my letters: 1) who I am (including occupations & city) and what I wish from the Congress member; 2) One or at most two sentences of reasoning — including poll statistics or actual quotes from the Congress member; 3) Reiteration of what I wish from the Congress member and a friendly thank you.
And actually, unlike what might well be the case with snailmail, no aides seemed to mind when I was called from out of their members’ constituencies (I did call my own representatives at times), specifically since the issue (health reform) was national and especially when I mentioned nationwide donations (such as through ActBlue). Some aides asked for my ZIP — I’ve received a few mailings — and when the aides themselves seemed especially pleased with my perspective, I could hear it in their voices. A bad-result call ended with an aide saying, basically, “Thanks, bye”; a good-result call ended with an “I’ll be sure to pass along your comments to the Senator/Representative, thanks so much!”
Sometimes I opened with a compliment regarding something the Congress member did that I appreciated (easy to find from his or her website, or from the search strategies discussed in this post), and sometimes I simply called to say nothing more than thanks for a specific quote the Congress member gave the press or whomever; these aides and Congress members typically get angry phone calls, so it’s nice for them to receive gratitude every once in a while.
Some people went out of their way to tell me this type of activism is worthless, saying the aides’ phones must be perpetually busy. Well they’re not. I had a little trouble getting through the final day or two before the health reform legislation passed — but generally I had no trouble.
Phone numbers for elected officials can be found at USA.gov here. Definitely check out my preceding post for more stratagem. I think people neglect a whole lot of good activities — such as calling Congress — simply because the transaction costs, the totals of the effort and the irritation that must be endured to do the good deed, are too high. Activists should lower them, with info and otherwise.
Hart Senate Office Building, via goldberg In addition to snail-mailing Congress, I’ve telephoned elected officials (in both cases, I activist-ed in favor of a genuine public option for health care...
I’ve posted about snail-mailing the United States Congress (in my case, in favor of a genuine public
option for health care — er, health insurance reform!), and now I’m finally following up on my results, as suggested.
The main result was that I learned more about the United States government, apparently a bureaucratic republic instead of a representative democracy, but anyway. Besides clarifying my own thoughts about the topics I sent letters about, I learned how to send letters — and make phone calls — more effectively. And I gained informal, experiential knowledge of what happens when you do contact Congress.
I posted one of my letters almost in its entirety; if you want, you could use it as a template for your own letters: basically, three paragraphs, 1) who you are and what action you wish the elected official to take — the more specific the issue and action, the better; 2) why you support that action — in addition to giving abstract argument you can remind elected officials of their statements with a Google News Archive search or with a regular Google search such as “max baucus” “public option” site:huffingtonpost.com and you can remind them of pertinent poll numbers; 3) restate the action you want the elected official to take, and maybe conclude with a kicker.
Although I’d planned — unrealistically and expensively — to snail-mail all 535 federal Congress members (should’ve been less; it would’ve been worthless to snail-mail Republicans, with the short-lived exception of Olympia Snowe, as it quickly became apparent none would vote for the reform legislation, and none did), I only wound up snail-mailing about 10. No Congress members replied to my letters, if I recall correctly. The President sent a form-letter back.
Some questioned whether sending snail-mail to Congress was effective at all. As I mentioned in a previous post, in 2009 The Washington Post persuasively reported that a professional lobbyist firm snail-mailed astroturfed (fake grassroots) letters to US Representative Tom Perriello. So if they expect fake letters to work, you should expect real letters to work. By the way, Shakespeare knew astroturfing:
[Cassius:] I will this night, In several hands, in at his windows throw, As if they came from several citizens, Writings all tending to the great opinion
Another question: if you live in Texas and mail a Congress member representing, say, Maine, do they see your Texas return address and trash the envelope posthaste (even if the issue has directly nationwide consequences)? Some friends argued so; others argued just as vehemently otherwise — it’s amazing, this is one of those issues on which everyone’s an expert. I don’t know the answer, but I did find a partial answer to another question: how long does it take snail-mail to reach a Congress member’s office from the time you put the envelope in a drop-box forward? This is important for letters concerning timely issues. Several government websites act as if post-9/11 security measures cause eons of delay, but since I had third-hand word that the delay warnings are simply smokescreens for decreasing letter volume, I emailed the Postmaster General my question. The response:
September 18, 2009
Dear Douglas Lucas:
This is to acknowledge your email to the Postmaster General, for whom I am responding.
The time for a letter to arrive at a Congressional office can vary for a number of reasons, and the total time (from the time a customer deposits their letter until it is received in the specific Congressional office) is not something we can measure with certainty as we do not operate the mailrooms of Congress or other governmental agencies. Instead, we only handle the mail from the point of origin to the tender of the mail to those mailrooms.
The length of time a letter is in our control will vary, depending on the current flow of mail as well as other factors (including accuracy of addressing) but as a guideline all of the functions we are performing should be completed in less than two weeks. Please let me stress, however, we cannot estimate and do not maintain records for the total time until delivery in the Congressional representative’s office.
Sincerely,
Robert MacCloskey
Postal Service Headquarters
When I was in DC on my honeymoon, I really wanted to stop by a Capitol Office Building (e.g., Hart) and ask the mailroom there what they do once a letter arrives. But I didn’t have time. If anyone out there does this, please leave a note in the comments!
I’ll post about my experiences telephoning Congress soon.
via Amanda Walker I’ve posted about snail-mailing the United States Congress (in my case, in favor of a genuine public option for health care — er, health insurance reform!), and...
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