{"id":1699,"date":"2010-07-06T07:40:31","date_gmt":"2010-07-06T13:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/?p=1699"},"modified":"2010-07-06T07:40:31","modified_gmt":"2010-07-06T13:40:31","slug":"how-to-call-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/06\/how-to-call-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Call Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"Hart<\/a><\/p>\n

Hart Senate Office Building, via goldberg<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In addition to snail<\/a>–mailing<\/a> Congress, I’ve telephoned elected officials (in both cases, I activist-ed in favor of a genuine public<\/a> option<\/a> for health care — er, health insurance reform!).<\/p>\n

For me, calling Congress was an intimidating task at first. Maybe you know about the infamous Milgram experiment<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n

\"scary<\/a><\/p>\n

TRUST ME (via Kevin Lawver<\/a>)<\/div>\n

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<\/em> and Danger: Severe Shock<\/em> buttons, but finally the XXX<\/em> 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!<\/p>\n

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<\/a>‘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.<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a><\/p>\n

My Headquarters (via John Smith<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/a>). 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!”<\/p>\n

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<\/a>), 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> — but generally I had no trouble.<\/p>\n

Phone numbers for elected officials can be found at USA.gov here.<\/a> Definitely check out my preceding post for more stratagem<\/a>. I think people neglect a whole lot of good activities — such as calling Congress — simply because the transaction costs<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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...<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,38,24],"tags":[125,119,111],"class_list":["post-1699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-dc","category-politics","tag-activism","tag-dc","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1699"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1734,"href":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions\/1734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}