Climate Change is a defining issue for me, but I’ve barely called congress about it. It just didn’t make sense to urge my Rep. (Ed Markey) to vote for the, uh, Waxman-Markey Bill. And I made only a few calls to undecided lawmakers because—let’s face it—non-constituent calls mean less.
But some of my Facebook friends are constituents of undecided Senators. So I asked them to contact their Senators as a two minute favor to me. I gave them the Senators' contact information, and even provided talking points.
I did this using FriendRoots, a Facebook App I created for this purpose. I hope you will, too. Go to http://www.FriendRoots.com, choose a campaign (Public Option or Climate) and you'll get a list of which of your friends live in the district of an undecided lawmaker. You’ll get links to a draft of a personalized email to your friend asking her to call the lawmaker—with talking points and the lawmaker’s contact info.
Don’t just make one non-constituent call, make five constituent calls... with a little help from your friends.
FriendRootsis initially focused on Public Option and Climate. It will give you a list of friends who are currently constituents of wavering lawmakers (if you have lots of friends, they will be grouped by lawmaker). (For now, the wavering Public Option lawmakers are the Blue Dog Caucus, while the list of wavering Senators on Global Warming is a combination of a ranking by E&E news (pdf) (h/t the cunctator) and Nate Silver's rankings.) FriendRoots will also look up which of your friends originally come from a wavering lawmaker's district (via the "hometown" information), but will generate an email with slightly different text: it asks the recipient to forward it to any friends or family still living in the district (I figure that's better than simply ignoring the friend completely).
I used FriendRoots myself to email some friends, most of whom I consider fairly non-political. Most didn't reply, but here are some representative responses:
[From a college friend in AZ whom I hadn't communicated with in years]
Thanks <my name>
I've actually done this previously, although it will surprise you little that our two Senators aren't particularly responsive.
Thanks for pushing on this!
From an old friend now in CA whom I now exchange mail with about 5 times per year.
sure! thanks for asking!
From another CA friend:
Sure... I support public health care as well and I would be happy to do my part to actually get something done instead of just sitting around supporting it in my head. Thanks for all of the information to do that.
I did not get a single negative response. And the last one (the one who had previously just sat "around supporting it in my head") went on to use FriendRootsto draft a couple of emails to her friends, perhaps (if she actually sent them) generating a few more calls. And if we multiply these "few calls" by all of you...
FriendRoots will help you ensure that phone calling campaigns are better organized, that key lawmakers get a) more calls b) from their own constituents. It just hinges on you knowing some folks who support these causes (and remember, the ideas behind the Public Option and Waxman-Markey are overwhelmingly popular) who are willing—as a favor to you-- to transcribe your talking points into a lawmaker contact form, or read them into a phone.
FriendRoots is a new tool which I’ve rushed into use in time to still be relevant to the ongoing debates. It has some issues. You have to type in your friends names yourself into the to: field of the email it drafts. Because zip codes and cities can be split between districts, a small fraction of the people Friendroots thinks are constituents of a particular Rep. actually aren't (although this obviously doesn't affect Senators). FriendRoots doesn't yet report some important information (# of phone calls made per campaign, whether or not your friend clicked the link to indicate she actually called the lawmaker). Hopefully, these issues will be fixed with time. But please let me know in the comments about other areas that need improvement.
Finally, I’d like to be extremely clear that FriendRoots is not intended to compete with the superb work being done by nyceve, slinkerwink, Jane Hamsher, and others. Rather, it is intended to add to our community's toolbox. If FriendRoots works out well, I'll attempt to coordinate with those working on causes we approve of-- basically giving activists associated with a cause full control over which lawmakers to target and what messages should say. This will allow our community to friendsource much of its activism.
But that's for another day. Today-- today!-- the need is great for pressure on lawmakers wavering on the Public Option and Global Warming-- and, as we all know, the clock is ticking. So please give FriendRoots a try. Now. Let's see how many constituent phone calls we can generate before you crash my server.
And if you like FriendRoots, tell your friends, and get them to use it, too. Let's get these bills through congress... with a little help from our friends.
Postscript on Timing: Much of this diary was drafted days ago, and yeah, I'm just as upset as all of you that the Public Option was postponed yesterday. But that means both sides have more of an opportunity to organize-- and our opponents will take full advantage of this. So, as Mother Jones said, don't mourn, Facebookize! (or something like that).