Resisting the Trump agenda

A friend in Washington DC, a high-level Senate staffer who doesn’t wish to be identified, gave us some good advice.

There are two things that all Democrats should be doing all the time right now, and they're by far the most important things.

You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing.

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 townhalls, go to them. Go to their local offices. If you're in DC, try to find a way to go to an event of theirs.

Go to the "mobile offices" that their staff hold periodically (all these times are located on each congressperson'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.

But those in-person events don't happen every day. So the absolute most important thing that people should be doing every day is calling.

You should try to make six calls a day: two each (their Washington DC office and your local office) to your two senators & your one representative.

The staffer was very clear that 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's not worth the time it took you to craft that letter.

Calls are what all the congresspeople pay attention to. Every single day, the senior staff and the senator get a report of the three most-called-about topics for that day at each of their offices (in DC and their local offices), and exactly how many people said what about each of those topics. They're also sorted by zip code and area code.

She said that Republican callers generally outnumber Democrat callers 4-1, and when it's a particular issue that single-issue voters pay attention to (like gun control, or Planned Parenthood funding, etc), it's often closer to 11-1, and that has recently pushed Republican congressmen on the fence to vote with the Republicans.

In the last eight years, Republicans have called, and Democrats haven't.

So, when you call the DC office, ask for the staff member in charge of whatever you're calling about ("Hi, I'd like to speak with the staffer in charge of healthcare, please"). Local offices won't always have specific ones, but they might. If you get transferred to that person, awesome. If you don't, that's okay - ask for their name, and then just keep talking to whoever answered the phone.

Don't leave a message (unless the office doesn't pick up at all -- then you can...but it's better to talk to the staffer who first answered than leave a message for the specific staffer in charge of your topic).

Give them your zip code. They won'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'll want to make sure they get/keep your vote.

If you can make it personal, make it personal. "I voted for you in the last election and I'm worried/happy/whatever" or "I'm a teacher, and I am appalled by Betsy DeVos," or "as a single mother" or "as a white, middle class woman," or whatever.

Pick one or two specific things per day to focus on. Don't go down a whole list -- they're figuring out what 1 or 2 topics to mark you down for on their lists.

Ideally, your topic should be something that will be voted on or taken up in the next few days, but it doesn't really matter. Even if there's not a vote coming up in the next week, call anyway. It's important that they just keep getting calls.

Be clear about what you want: "I'm disappointed that the Senator..." or "I want to thank the Senator for their vote on..." or "I want the Senator to know that voting in that specific way is the wrong decision for our state because..." Don't leave any ambiguity.

They may get to know your voice and get sick of you. It doesn't matter. The people answering the phones generally turn over every six weeks anyway, so even if they're really sick of you, they'll be gone pretty soon.

From experience since the election: If you hate being on the phone and feel awkward (which is a lot of people), don't worry about it. There are a bunch of scripts. Indivisible has some, and there are lots of others floating around. After a few days of calling, it starts to feel a lot more natural.

Put the numbers in your phone, DC office and local office, all under P for Politician: Politician Franken MN; Politician Franken DC; Politician Heitcamp ND, Politician Heitcamp DC; Hoeven ND, Hoeven DC; Kramer ND, Kramer DC; Klobuchar MN, Klobuchar DC; Peterson MN; Peterson DC. That makes it really easy to click down the list each day.

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