This group made a splash in recent days, a big enough splash that a lot of people have already downloaded and started to read this terrific primer on HOW TO MAKE CONGRESS LISTEN TO YOU.
The guide is available at www.IndivisibleGuide.com
Once there, hover over “The Guide” on the top menu shown and you’ll get these options:
What is all the hullabaloo about this document?
In the era when you can send various social media messages, send Faxes, send typed or handwritten letters or you can call either their D.C. or a local office to contact your members of Congress, it behooves us all to choose the method of communications which gets us the best response from them.
THIS is the message at the beginning of the Indivisible Guide to all readers from the creators:
NOTE FROM THE INDIVISIBLE TEAM
Since this guide went live as a Google Doc, we’ve received an overwhelming flood of messages from people all over the country working to resist the Trump agenda. We’re thrilled and humbled by the energy and passion of this growing movement. We’ll be updating the guide based on your feedback and making it interactive ASAP. You can sign up for updates at www.IndivisibleGuide.com.
Every single person who worked on this guide and website is a volunteer. We’re doing this in our free time without coordination or support from our employers. Our only goal is to help the real leaders on the ground who are resisting Trump’s agenda on their home turf. We hope you will take this document and use it however you see fit.
We want to hear your stories, questions, comments, edits, etc., so please feel free to ping some of us on Twitter:
@IndivisibleTeam
@ezralevin
@angelrafpadilla
@texpat
@Leahgreenb
Or email IndivisibleAgainstTrump@gmail.com
And please please please spread the word! Only folks who know this exists will use it.
Good luck — we will win.
The instructions on the Guide:
We: Are former progressive congressional staffers who saw the Tea Party beat back President Obama’s agenda.
We: See the enthusiasm to fight the Trump agenda and want to share insider info on how best to influence Congress to do that.
You: Want to do your part to beat back the Trump agenda and understand that will require more than calls and petitions.
You: Should use this guide, share it, amend it, make it your own, and get to work.
For those who are not citizens and concerned about whether they have any right to have their voices heard by Congress:
NOTE TO IMMIGRANTS AND NONCITIZENS
The U.S. Constitution ensures equal representation for all individuals living in the United States, regardless of income, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, or immigration status. Noncitizens, though they may lack the right to vote in federal elections, have the right to have their voices heard by their representatives in Congress.
This guide is intended to serve as a resource to all individuals who would like to more effectively participate in the democratic process. While we encourage noncitizens to participate to the extent that they are able, individuals should only take actions that they are comfortable taking, and should consider their particular set of circumstances before engaging in any of these activities.
Individuals are under no obligation to provide any personally identifiable information to a member of Congress or their staff. Individuals may be asked for their name and zip code, but this is only to confirm that the person is a constituent, and providing this information is strictly voluntarily. NO ONE is required to provide any additional information, such as address, social security number, or immigration status.
Today, I will be covering Chapter 4 of the Guide, as it is applicable to my purposes of engaging in Contact with Congress which WORKS —
CHAPTER 4
Four local advocacy tactics that actually work. Most of you have three Members of Congress (MoC) — 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
As you can see, the only NOT IN PERSON action which the writers of the Indivisible Guide advise to use to contact your MoC is to CALL THEM, and to do so in a coordinated campaign.
“Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.” — DOLORES HUERTA, Democrat activist from Nevada
Mass office calling is a light lift, but it can actually have an impact. Tea Partiers regularly flooded congressional offices with calls at opportune moments, and MoCs noticed.
- Find the phone numbers for your MoCs. Again, you can find your local MoCs and their office phone numbers at www.callmycongress.com
- Prepare a single question per call. For in-person events, you want to prepare a host of questions, but for calls, you want to keep it simple. You and your group should all agree to call in on one specific issue that day. The question should be about a live issue — e.g. a vote that is coming up, a chance to take a stand, or some other time-sensitive opportunity. The next day or week, pick another issue, and call again on that.
- Find out who you’re talking to. In general, the staffer who answers the phone will be an intern, a staff assistant, or some other very junior staffer in the MoCs office. But you want to talk to the legislative staffer who covers the issue you’re calling about. There are two ways to go about doing this:
Ask to speak to the staffer who handles the issue (immigration, health care etc). Junior staff are usually directed to not tell you who this is, and instead just take down your comment instead.
On a different day, call and ask whoever answers the phone, “Hi, can you confirm the name of the staffer who covers [immigration/health care/etc]?” Staff will generally tell you the name. Say “thanks!” and hang up. Ask for the staffer by name when you call back next time.
- If you’re directed to voicemail, follow up with email. Then follow up again. Getting more senior legislative staff on the phone is tough. The junior staffer will probably just tell you “I checked, and she’s not at her desk right now, but would you like to leave a voicemail?” Go ahead and leave a voicemail, but don’t expect a call back. Instead, after you leave that voicemail, follow up with an email to the staffer. If they still don’t respond, follow up again. If they still don’t respond, let the world know that the MoC’s office is dodging you.
Congressional emails are standardized, so even if the MoC’s office won’t divulge that information, you can probably guess it if you have the staffer’s first and last name.
Senate email addresses: For the Senate, the formula is: StafferFirstName_StafferLastName@MoCLastName.senate.gov. For example, if Jane Doe works for Senator Roberts, her email address is likely “Jane_Doe@roberts.senate.gov”
House email addresses: For the House, the formula is simpler: StafferFirstName.StafferLastName@mail.house.gov. For example, if Jane Doe works in the House, her email address is likely “Jane.Doe@mail.house.gov”
- Keep a record of the conversation. Take detailed notes on everything the staffer tells you. Direct quotes are great, and anything they tell you is public information that can be shared widely. Compare notes with the rest of your group, and identify any conflicts in what they’re telling constituents.
- Report back to media and your group. Report back to both your media contacts and your group what the staffer said when you called.
When you use www.callmycongress.com to find out contact information for your US Rep or Senator, this is what you see (this example is for my zip code 98686):
State WA
Congressional District 3
Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler
Sen. Maria Cantwell
The Indivisible Guide even offers up scripts to use when contacting your MoC.
The Austin branch of Indivisible has written and posted a number of scripts to use, like this one aimed at any changes to the PPACA/Obamacare:
Affordable Care Act
I am calling to ask my Senator to vote NO on the repeal of the ACA and the mandates which help Obamacare function. The ACA has made it possible for 20 million more Americans to get health insurance, and reduced the uninsured rate to the lowest in history, and made health insurance within reach of 17.6 million people. We should not return to the time when a family was an illness away from bankruptcy, and taxpayers had to pay $75 to $125 BILLION dollars for uncompensated emergency-room visits. Please vote NO on repealing the ACA/Obamacare without plans for a replacement.
There are quite a few of those scripts, I encourage you to go read (and copy!) all of them.
When they subtitled this document “A practical guide for resisting the Trump Agenda” they weren’t kidding.
So go download your copy and READ IT until you KNOW IT, cover to cover.
Then start putting it into action, like I’m doing right in my own Legislative District this week.
I’ve started organizing a Congressional District Wide week of action here, via our private Facebook page for the Clark County Democrats in Washington State.
We’ll run a week of in-person visits to our US Rep’s local offices (she only has two) and then a week of coordinated phone calls to those local offices — all aimed at demanding she vote “NO” on any repeal of PPACA/Obamacare.
THIS is how we combat the Republican Horde which is occupying our Congress and Statehouses!
So get your copy, read it and put it to work where you live.
Like the former congressional staffers who wrote this wonderful guide, I urge you to all get active, because when we do it — we will win!
For anyone wishing to write stories about how they are using the Indivisible Guide to FIGHT BACK against the Trump Agenda, leave a comment and I’ll send you an invite to the group!
UpDate —
If you attend a local Democratic County Party monthly meeting, please email your Chair either this story link or just the link to the Indivisible Guide (www.IndivisibleGuide.com) and ask them to read it and implement it locally.
If you can, offer to be one of the people to plan your local week of action on the PPACA/Obamacare.