Contacting legislators at the local, state, and federal levels works (see Resource #3 below). Light up the switchboards—though they probably don’t use switchboards anymore, but you know what I mean. Keep those little aides busy.
C is for CONTACT
- Have the phone numbers of your local, state, and federal representatives on speed dial.
How to Contact your Federal Legislators
- Go to Senate.gov. Use the menu at the top and click on Senators. You should see an option to Contact. Select that, and you will be directed to a page where you can search for your senators. Select your state, and the senators for that state, along with their contact information, will appear before your eyes.
- Go to https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
- Enter your ZIP code, and you’ll be directed to the representative’s page. These are all different and are maintained by the individual representative. You should be able to find contact information on their website or other relevant pages.
- 5call.org is a great resource to explore potential issues you may want to address with your representatives. They provide a list of issues, phone numbers for the relevant legislators, and a script of what to say. You can go with the script or you can improvise, but all of the advice on their site is useful.
How to Locate Your State and Local Representatives.
- Alternatively, visit your state’s government website. Mine is MO.Gov. You can google your state or try the state name or abbreviation followed by .gov. Be sure that wherever you land has the .gov designation to ensure that you are on the official government page and not some scammy site.
- Your state website should have a way to find a bill list so you know what issues are being debated in your state and a way to track a bill you are interested in.
- Make 5 calls every day. They can be the same calls to the same places about the same things or you can spread your wisdom around like manure on roses. We just hope the roses bloom one of these days.
- Most legislators have a contact form. Fill that out, too, with the comment of your choice.
- Email legislators. Be succinct. Be focused. Be polite. Be as kind as you can be—it’s perfectly possible to give people hell and still be polite.
Resources
- Should you call legislators who are not yours?
- Tips for Contacting Elected Officials
- Does Contacting Elected Officials Do Any Good?
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Contact and engagement with legislators is indeed a necessary component. These are helpful links. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for commenting! Calling is not my best thing, but I’m trying to do it better every time.
I’m finding it helpful to set aside a specific period of time each week to contact my legislators. As a set task I know I’ll get to it, but I needn’t hold the tension and angst on my mind and in my body all day long, every day.
oh, so right- assign it a time and just do it. I tend to worry about it for a few hours before I do it–not the healthiest way to approach this task.
I’m getting very familiar with house.mo.gov and senate.mo.gov! Next week, I’m going to Jefferson City with a few friends to talk to our reps and senators in person. That will be a new experience for me.
Go, you!! Good luck! I know we are supposed to keep trying but with some of these people in MO, well, my patience is short.
Another great post! I have started regularly contacting my legislators — something I had never really done before. I have found that using Resistbot has made it easy for me. I do it through Facebook Messenger and it’s so simple. I’ve received autoreplies from my legislators’ offices so I know the messages were received, but never any personalized response, but I never expect that anyway.
P.S. I have been looking for a way to subscribe to your blog but am not seeing any button for that. Am I being dippy and not finding it?
Argh–I think I have the Subscribe thing fixed–should be a subscribe button at the end of each post and on the sidebar–If it’s working right. Thanks! Resistbot is something I’ll try out!
Yep, it works and I am now subscribed! I am looking forward to the rest of your A to Z posts as well as everything else you share!