Continuous Action Time: Call Your Reps and Show Up to Events

Hi readers! I’ve taken most of the last week or so off to give myself a little brain break and recharge for the fights we still have ahead of us. I was so inspired by the millions (!!!) of people who turned out to march this past Saturday. We got under Trump’s skin and showed the country and the world that we’re not going to take this administration lying down. Now we have to back that up with sustained, continuous action, primarily in the form of calling our representatives and showing up to civic events for both local and national politics. This needs to be the beginning of a millions-strong movement, not the entirety of it.

Pissed off about something the Senate is doing? Call your Senators. Want a new piece of legislation to be introduced in the House? Call your Representative. That doesn’t just go for your Members of Congress (MoCs) in D.C. – you can call your state legislative reps as well. Call your governor’s office. Call your mayor’s office. Your city council reps. Show up to events – ask your MoCs when their next constituent event or town hall is. And then show up. Ask questions. Push them. Bring your friends and family with you and have them ask questions too. Largely agree with what your Rep does? Thank them, and ask them to make statements condemning actions that don’t fit with their values and to introduce legislation about issues that you care about. Largely disagree? Tell them so, loudly and repeatedly, and tell them what you want them to do instead. Tell them that you support the ACA, the Endangered Species Act, our National Parks, protecting the rights of women and POC, ending hate crimes, cracking down on police brutality, climate change, transportation, housing affordability, ANYTHING that you can think of that you support, and make them listen to you. Calls are great, showing up at events is even better. Get involved with local political groups and/or your local branch of the Democratic Party. Make politics look closer to the way you want them to look.

I’ll still be posting, hopefully about 3x a week, with concrete actions to take. But we’re in the middle of everything now, so we have to be proactive. Call, call, call, and show up, show up, show up. The Tea Party had pretty bad policies but extremely effective strategies – let’s beat them at their own game.

Download IndivisibleGuide and Register for an Action Group Near You

The IndivisibleGuide is “A practical guide for resisting the Trump Agenda: Former congressional staffers reveal best practices for making Congress listen.”

There is a downloadable guide in both English and Spanish, which documents some of the best activities you can take to subvert Trump’s agenda, and the most effective ways of carrying them out.

From their website:

Here’s the quick and dirty summary of this document. While this page summarizes top- level takeaways, the full document describes how to actually carry out these activities.

CHAPTER 1

How grassroots advocacy worked to stop President Obama. We examine lessons from the Tea Party’s rise and recommend two key strategic components:

1. A local strategy targeting individual Members of Congress (MoCs).
2. A defensive approach purely focused on stopping Trump from implementing an agenda built on racism, authoritarianism, and corruption.

CHAPTER 2

How your MoC thinks — reelection, reelection, reelection — and how to use that to save democracy. MoCs want their constituents to think well of them and they want good, local press. They hate surprises, wasted time, and most of all, bad press that makes them look weak, unlikable, and vulnerable. You will use these interests to make them listen and act.

CHAPTER 3

Identify or organize your local group. Is there an existing local group or network you can join? Or do you need to start your own? We suggest steps to help mobilize your fellow constituents locally and start organizing for action.

CHAPTER 4

Four local advocacy tactics that actually work. Most of you have three MoCs — two Senators and one Representative. Whether you like it or not, they are your voices in Washington. Your job is to make sure they are, in fact, speaking for you. We’ve identified four key opportunity areas that just a handful of local constituents can use to great effect. Always record encounters on video, prepare questions ahead of time, coordinate with your group, and report back to local media:

1. Town halls. MoCs regularly hold public in-district events to show that they are listening to constituents. Make them listen to you, and report out when they don’t.
2. Non-town hall events. MoCs love cutting ribbons and kissing babies back home. Don’t let them get photo-ops without questions about racism, authoritarianism, and corruption.
3. District office sit-ins/meetings. Every MoC has one or several district offices. Go there. Demand a meeting with the MoC. Report to the world if they refuse to listen.
4. Coordinated calls. Calls are a light lift but can have an impact. Organize your local group to barrage your MoCs at an opportune moment about and on a specific issue.

There are also local action groups being set up based on the action called for in this document, so if there’s one in your area, I highly encourage you to sign up for it and participate.

Download the guide in English or Spanish here.

Find and sign up for a local action group here.

Learn more here.

Sign Up for Flippable.Org to Help Flip Seats Blue

This idea courtesy of the re:act newsletter (sign up for it!):

One of the best ways that we can make progress in our policy is by making sure that there are progressive lawmakers at every level of the government, across the country. Flippable’s goal is to inform people of when there’s a race that would flip a seat to a Democrat/other progressive and allow them to take action to ensure that the seat does, indeed, flip (via donations, phone banking, etc.).

Sign Up for and Use CoolYouVoted.com

The Association of Young Americans, a new group that seeks to lobby on behalf of Americans ages 18-35 (like the AARP, but for young people – and the AARP has some pretty real power), has created a really great tool called Cool You Voted – Check out their website for a full explanation and to sign up, but basically if you sign up, it allows you to contact your representatives via Twitter, Email, and Facebook (or any combination of the three) by completing a form that they’ll send you every two weeks with relevant topics.

(While you’re at it, I also recommend signing up for a membership with the Association of Young Americans  – there’s a free option, but if you chip in at least $20 you get some cool discounts and benefits from companies like Lyft. This is a potentially really powerful way to get the 18-35yo demographic heard more clearly in D.C.)