Did you sign the petition? You did? I did too, good for us. Nothing to it, especially if you have autocomplete turned on. It only took a couple of seconds, and I'm sure Speaker Pelosi will be pleased at the outpouring of support from the community.
Now send her a letter.
Send her a letter, not an email. In case you're unfamiliar with the process, it goes like this:
- Using a word processor, or if you're really old-fashioned, a typewriter, or if you're more old-fashioned than that, a pad of paper and a pen, Compose in your own words a message for the intended recipient.
- Sign the letter in ink and enclose it in an envelope. On the envelope, put your return address in the upper left-hand corner or on the flap. On the front of the envelope, put the name and address of the intended recipient. For Speaker Pelosi, you would use the following:
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
235 Cannon HOB
Washington, DC 20515-0508
- On the upper right-hand corner, affix a first-class postage stamp. These can be obtained on line from the U.S. Postal Service, and are sold at all post offices and most grocery stores.
- Locate a USPS mailbox and drop it into the slot. Note that this will be the most difficult part of the process, but I can assure you that these still exist.
If you don't want to send your letter just to Speaker Pelosi, you can find the mailing address for your own representative here. Please do so immediately.
As most of you know, the new majority in the U.S. House of Representatives have made it their #1 priority to confront the President and the Senate with toxic "legislation" that will serve no purpose other than what they perceive to be political gain for them. In between crafting sham legislation, they are intent on launching an endless parade of witch hunts aimed at interfering with the ability of the Executive Branch to govern without meaningful legislation.
They have said all of this before the first gavel is to fall on the 112th Congress. Somebody needs to tell them this is not in the best interests of the American people, who are struggling with nearly double-digit unemployment, stagnant wages, foreclosures, and continuing exploitation by health insurers. It is not in the best interests of our armed forces in the Middle East, who are fighting what is clearly becoming an aimless war with no clear exit strategy. It is not in the interests of our small businesses, the backbone of our economy, who are struggling to find credit to grow or to keep their doors open.
There is a form on the House of Representatives website that allows you to contact your representative with just a few clicks of a mouse and a few keystrokes. This is much easier than taking the time to write and mail a letter, particularly when you can just copy and paste a message written by somebody else.
And it is just as easy for them to delete a million or 30 million emails in nanoseconds with even fewer clicks of the mouse. This is why we need to send old-fashioned, paper-and-ink mail to their Washington offices. They'll have to actually pay someone to collect the mail and feed it into a shredder. Or they might even pay a staffer to open it and spend a few seconds categorizing it before it's shredded.
But it's not as easy to ignore. If members of Congress start getting mail by the sackful, they might trip over it on those occasions that they visit their Washington offices. If the postal service starts delivering it by the semi trailer load to the House office building, it might even attract the attention of the Beltway press corps.
And oh, yeah - you can write to them too.