All of the bad internet bills. One website.
Hi. I have to bring you a non-fortune post. This is too important to do otherwise. It has to do with US politics and it has to do with you and your freedom to access the internet how you want to. If you are queer or otherwise part of a marginalized group and you've found community on the internet, this is absolutely about you and your expression and the younger generations of queers who come after us.
The censorship bills are piling up in Congress and we need to speak out against them. This is time-sensitive as they're pushing through hearings about this presently.
Reach out to your senators and representatives. Call them.
Calls are anxiety-inducing. I know this.
These calls are easy. You will feel accomplished after these calls and I'm telling you that from experience.
You'll call your rep's office. They'll say, "This is [rep's name] office, how can I help you?" And you can literally just spit this out in one run-on sentence, in one deep breath if you have to. You say:
"I am one of [rep's name]'s constituents. I want them to vote against all internet censorship bills—KIDS, KOSA, the App Store Accountability Act, Sammy's Law, the SCREEN Act. All of them. Do not vote for them. That's it."
They'll thank you. They'll hang up. They took their notes from the call and picked up the next call by the time you set your phone down. Your voice was heard.
The website above will have a different script that might help. I'm sure people here and on other socmed sites are sharing scripts. This is the one I use and I just spit out the names of the first 3 bills I can remember (KIDS, SCREEN, KOSA). We just don't want the damn censorship!!
If you have the spoons to rant, let them have it. These bills are not about protecting children. They're about censoring the internet, monetizing everything, capitulating to religious conservatives, stifling art and expression, monitoring our every word and our every move.
They're vile measures of control cloaked in the language of care for kids. We know that shit ain't true. If this government cared about kids, our tax dollars would go to ensuring they have breakfast and lunch at school, universal healthcare, and free childcare for the hours their parents are at work. They would also put guardrails on AI before it drives more people to harming themselves and others. Instead, our tax dollars go to hearings about these farcical bills and to bombing children in other countries.
Email after this.
Emails help, but nothing helps so much as that 30-second phone call.
Please know that the old "flood their office with paper faxes" trick doesn't work. I can also tell you from experience that government office faxes go to email. They're not automatically printed out.
Yeah, it has to be phone calls.
The good news is that, if I am capable of this, you are very capable of this. Please give it a shot.
