House Vote #253 in 2017, in the United States Congress.
The Affordable Care Act repeal passed the House: time to name and shame. If your representative is on the list of who voted for this bill, call and make it absolutely clear to them that they have lost your vote and why. Write to your local newspaper and make it clear to them that your representative has lost your vote and why. Post it to social media. Make some fucking noise. Then make it fucking real: if you’re not already registered to vote, register now, so you’ll be ready to cast your ballot for your representative’s opposition in 2018. If your state offers it, I also recommend that you register as a permanent absentee voter today, so that you can vote by mail if you want to and don’t have to worry about whether you’ll be able to make it to the polls in 2018.
Likewise: you need to be on the phone with your senators, now, soon, every single chance you get, starting today, until we get this permanently killed in the Senate. You need to be telling everyone you know to call in, too. You need to be shouting about this from the fucking rooftops: this bill will double the number of uninsured in less than 10 years, and the people who will suffer most are people with disabilities, women, minorities, and the poor, including the working poor. In exchange, the wealthiest 2% of the country is getting a massive tax break.
If that’s not okay with you, stand up and complain.
Engage with critical press organizations; oppose Steve Bannon.
The Five Minutes for Freedom series is a collection of small, step-by-step walkthroughs designed to help you take concrete political action in support of the principles of We With Us. The articles in the series are designed to be read and their steps followed in order, as later posts frequently build on earlier ones. A chronological index of all posts in the series can be found here. While this information is targeted primarily at US readers, we welcome readers from all countries and encourage you to adapt these strategies as necessary for your jurisdiction.
5M4F 17: Back a Free and Fearless Press (Part 2)
[Engage with critical press organizations; oppose Steve Bannon.]
Dependencies: 5M4F9, 5M4F10, 5M4F16.
This week’s 5M4F we’re going to get set up to engage with and constructively respond to failures and missteps in the American news media. As consumers of news media, and as members of the American public who rely on the news media for accurate information to guide our political decisions, we have both the right and the obligation to demand that the news media cover the news accurately, in a way that actually keeps us informed, and that resists the urge to kowtow to political pressure or push versions of the news that may sell better but are biased or misleading. We’re also going to complain about Steve Bannon! It's fun! It'll be a party!
As a bureaucratic sort of note, I'm moving to trying to get these up every other Sunday--the next will go up on March 26. Hopefully, that way, they will be a little bit more resiliant to shocks due to (e.g.) me being sick for a week and a half.
If you want to do this all in one go: Only one set of calls this week (about Steve Bannon), so it's totally possible to do all of these in one go. Huzzah!
If you want to do this five minutes at a time: This one really lends itself to that, with the exception of Task #3, which is to write a letter to the editor. Other than that, it's kind of business as usual: calls mean scripts x3 (5 min total, probably) and calls x3 (5 min each). The four mini-research tasks (to locate your ombudsman's offices and letter to the editor procedures) are probably 5-10 min each. The letter-writing will take you however long it takes you to find something to respond to, and then to write a short, to-the-point letter; I suspect that the easiest way to do this is to make notes of what you would like to respond to in the news articles that you consume as the week goes on (a bunch of 5 min chunks), and then write your thesis (one 5 min chunk), draft your letter around that thesis (this may take multiple 5 min chunks), and then edit (this also may take multiple 5 min chunks) before sending. Good letters to the editor are short (most papers have an upper limit that's substantially <250 words), so it's not like you have to pen a lengthy screed or anything, but it will take some time.
Section links:
Familiarize yourself with the ombudsman’s office of your news sources.
Familiarize yourself with the process for sending letters to the editor to your news sources.
Write your first letter to the editor.
Complain about Steve Bannon.
Representatives of particular interest.
Protesting amid breaking news.
How to write your scripts.
Familiarize yourself with the ombudsman’s office of your news sources: Part of this task is just familiarizing yourself with what an ombudsman (not always called an ombudsman these days) does. The ombudsman (or equivalent) at a news outlet is the body that acts as the advocate for the public at that news outlet: there usually is one main, head-person of some sort, who may be referred to either as “the ombudsman” directly (or some less gendered version of that), or as “the public editor,” as at The New York Times. However, they often have a staff, which is why I’m using the phrase “the ombudsman’s office”, rather than just saying “ombudsman” by itself. (Also, note that I’m using “ombudsman” rather than “public editor” because it’s a more established term and it’s also going to be a lot less confusing when it comes to bullet pt. 2, which is about sending letters to the editor—the editor editor, not the public editor. See?)
Anyway. In their role as the defenders of the public interest, the ombudsman’s office does things like investigate complaints about their outlet’s behavior, or advocate for reader interests behind closed doors at that outlet; as well as enforcing the outlet's rules on journalistic ethics. If you want to take issue with the conduct of a news outlet (e.g., this paper’s reporting on A is consistently misleading or inaccurate because of X, Y, and Z), and you actually want action, not just a letter that is published in that outlet for the record and/or other readers, you should contact the office of the ombudsman. Which, again, may not actually be called the office of the ombudsman, which can make things a little tricky.
This is one occasion where Google is both the simplest and, I suspect, the best option. I happened to know that the public editor of the NY Times is called the public editor, so I googled “new york times ombudsman” to see what happened: Google did exactly the right thing, and returned the NY Times public editor’s office as the first result. I am going to guess, without loads of evidence but with a pretty strong hunch, that you can do this for most reputable media outlets and get pretty decent results.
Your task, for this subheading heading, is to find the ombudsman’s office (or equivalent) for the two (or more) main news sources that we chose last time; and track down the information you would need to contact them. Also make a note of how they publicly respond to inquiries: i.e., do they publish a blog or regular column about their work? If so, where can you find that? In your 5M4F document, either make note of, or save a link to, both any requirements that the ombudsman’s office makes for incoming complaints, and the place where you see the results. If there is a specific person identified as the ombudsman or public editor, note their name, too. Here is my entry for NPR (so, if NPR is one of your sources, you can just copy paste this--that's one source as a freebie!):
NPR Ombudsman/Public Editor: Elizabeth Jensen - @EJensenNYC
Familiarize yourself with the process for sending letters to the editor to your news sources: This should really say "letters to the editor or equivalent" but I'm getting tired of typing "or equivalent" over and over, so. If one of your sources is NPR (for example), they don't publish letters to the editor but they do accept and sometimes play listener comments, which would be the equivalent. You're smart people, you can use your judgement.
Anyway, letters or otherwise, figure out how your preferred news outlets accept and publish reader/listener/consumer feedback, whatever form that takes. Once again, track down the information you would need to give them that reader/listener/consumer feedback. Also make a note of how they publicly respond to inquiries: i.e., do they publish a regular "Letters" column? Do they play listener calls every morning at 8:11? Whatever form this appears in, where can you find it? In your 5M4F document, either make note of, or save a link to, both any requirements that the editor’s office makes for incoming letters, and the place where you see the results. Here is my entry for The Guardian (so, if The Guardian is one of your sources, you can just copy paste this--that's one source as a freebie!):
Letters to the Editor at The Guardian: [email protected] - more info
Write your first letter to the editor: Again, or equivalent: if you're going to make a call, the equivalent would be to write a script for yourself, practice it, and then make your call.
Probably the easiest place to write a letter at the moment is on the neutering of the ACA and the GOP's genuinely life-threatening proposal to replace it, especially if you are a person who is covered by the exchanges and in danger of losing your care. Lots of news outlets are asking for reader/listener stories, so this is an easy way to ease yourself in to the process of getting involved with your news sources, if that seems overwhelming on a broader scale.
If you don't want to write about healthcare, the question to ask yourself is: what is this news outlet's coverage missing, or obscuring, or eliding? As you're reading the news this week, especially when you're reading about issues dear to your heart and close to your lived reality, think about what the news articles say, and more importantly don't say? What do you know that can add to this story? That's your letter. Good letters to the editor are generally very short (significantly less than a page). That can make them hard to write when you're not familiar with the process, but it also means that you don't, like, have to do seven hours of research to write a letter to the editor. You want to keep your letter short, simple, and to the point: my recommendation is, if you're not familiar with how to do that, that you just write as much as you need to to get your idea out. Then, you cut it down, rewriting as needed to make things more concise. Once you get used to the process of honing your ideas to fit, letters to the editor will also become pretty quick to write.
Complain about Steve Bannon: Honestly at this point I don’t really care why you complain about Steve Bannon, just that you do it. There are just so many things to complain about. Given that he’s described the media as “the opposition party,” that’s certainly a fruitful potential place to start. Note that some issues are going to require you to be a bit cannier than others: note that Bannon's stated position on several topics (e.g. healthcare, DACA) has softened, but that matters very little in terms of how terrifying his actual actions have been.
Whatever you choose to tackle, write your postcard to President Bannon, asking him to rein in his <insert demeaning job title here> Donald Trump on the topic you've chosen, and then [make your calls] to your representatives asking them to go on record against Bannon's position on that topic.
New feature! I’ve compiled a summary of Senators and Congresspersons of particular interest, i.e., representatives whose seats that were considered “battleground” races in 2016 and are likely to have an especially hard time in 2018/2020/2022. Again, these people likely fall into one of two categories: one, they’re Tea Party hardliners who won’t help us out; or two, they’re moderates holding onto mixed or moderate districts. We want to press that second group, and press them hard, because that is how you swing mixed/moderate districts to the left.
In the parentheses after their names, I’m giving these representatives states, their parties, and their margins of victory in 2016. Note that the list is alphabetical first by state, then by the rep’s name. If your representative(s) is (are) on this list, especially if their margin was especially small, it is particularly important that you put pressure on them, and get other people in your district to put pressure on them too, because your vote could very well be their next swing vote—and they know it. If you contact these people, please either reblog or send me an ask letting me know how it went if you have a second (were they receptive? did you have to jump through hoops to get at them?) and I will compile (anonymously if you wish) that feedback to help other We With Us’ers put pressure where it hurts.
Congresspersons of particular interest (all info from Ballotpedia): Tom O’Halleran (AZ, D, 7.3%), Ami Bera (CA, D, 2.3%), Stephen Knight (CA, R, 6.3%), Darrel Issa (CA, R, 0.5%), Mike Coffman (CO, R, 8.3%), Stephanie Murphy (FL, D, 3%), Brian Mast (FL, R, 10.5%), Carlos Curbelo (FL, R, 11.8%), Brad Schneider (IL, D, 5.2%), Rod Blum (IA, R, 7.7%), Bruce Poliquin (ME, R, 9.6%), Jack Bergman (MI, R, 14.8%), Jason Lewis (MN, R, 1.8%), Don Bacon (NE, R, 1.2%), Jacky Rosen (NV, D, 1.3%), Ruben Kihuen (NV, D, 4%), Carol Shea-Porter (NH, D, 1.3%), Josh Gottheimer (NJ, D, 4.4%), John Faso (NY, R, 8.6%), Claudia Tenney (NY, R, 5.5%), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA, R, 8.9%), Will Hurd (TX, R, 1.3%), Barbara Comstock (VA, R, 5.8%). You can also refer to the lists of DCCC/NRCC targeted incumbents for 2018, though those are much longer and kiiiiind of like the Democrat/Republican letters to Santa, at this point in the game.
Senators of particular interest (all info from Ballotpedia): Marco Rubio (FL, R, 7.7%), Tammy Duckworth (IL, D, 15.1%), Todd Young (IN, R, 9.7%), Roy Blunt (MO, R, 2.8%), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV, D, 2.4%), Maggie Hassan (NH, D, 0.1%), Richard Burr (NC, R, 5.7%), Pat Toomey (PA, R, 1.4%), Ron Johnson (WI, R, 3.4%). Note that none of these senators are up for election again until 2022, and that Democratic senators, writ large, are, right now, feeling much more vulnerable than Republican senators, writ large.
Engage thoughtfully if you live in one of the states that appears to have a state-wide rising Republican tide: try to focus on the bipartisan elements of the issues that you’re arguing for, and (even if you can't keep it bipartisan) keep it personal, rather than general. Your Tea Party-backed senator doesn't give two shits about human rights, but they do have to care about how what they do in Washington costs their constituents.
Also, for now: don’t contact any of these people if they don’t represent you directly. That can have value when it looks like one of them might be about to make a broader run (e.g. for state-wide office, if they’re in the House; or for the presidency), but for now it’s just going to be a waste of your time.
A note on protesting amid breaking news: As always, I recommend searching a reputable news source, like one of those two news sources you picked in 5M4F15 or The Guardian if you haven’t done that one yet, shortly before you make your calls, for any breaking-news updates that may require you to tweak your scripts. It’s often also useful to check your representatives’ website to see what press releases they have on a given subject, so you know whether (for example) they have already gone on-record as opposing Steve Bannon. If they have? Ask them to do it again. Make it clear that this stuff is important to you.
How to Write Your Scripts (excerpted from 5M4F-5): The basic phone script for calling your representatives goes something like so:
Hi, {can I ask who I’m speaking to? <, if they don’t say when they pick up>} _[Jot their name down.] _Hi, <their name>. My name is <your name> and I’m one of <your representative’s name>’s constituents in <where you live>. I wanted to let <your representative’s name> know that I strongly <support | oppose> <the thing you’re calling about>, because <succinct explanation of reason why you’re calling>. Is <your representative’s name> planning to <do the thing you want>?
Then you have to plan for a few different responses:
They’re with you: Thank you. Could you please let <appropriate pronoun> know that <expression of gratitude> and <indication that you will continue to watch your representative’s behavior and hold them accountable>?
They’re neutral: This subject is very important to me because <longer, more in-depth and emotive reason why you’re calling>. I would very much appreciate it if you could let <your representative’s name> know that I feel very strongly about this and would really encourage <appropriate pronoun> to <do the thing you want>. Is there any way I could follow up with you or <appropriate pronoun> later?
They oppose you: This subject is very important to me because <longer, more in-depth and emotive reason why you’re calling>. Can I ask why <your representative’s name> is <not doing the thing you want>? [Let them give you a reason, and write it down.] Okay, thank you. I understand <appropriate pronoun> concerns, but as one of <your representative’s name>’s voting constituents, I would really appreciate it if <appropriate pronoun> revisited <appropriate pronoun> decision because <alternate ****succinct explanation of reason why you’re calling>. Is there any way I could follow up with you or <appropriate pronoun> later?
<expression of gratitude>! <polite send-off>!
I want to point out that you probably don’t actually really need to plan for all of these responses. You can probably make a pretty good guess where your representative stands based on their party affiliation. However, especially if your representatives are moderates and often vote across the aisle, it’s not a bad idea to spend a little time planning for all three cases, because then your behind is covered, and you can recycle this language over and over on later calls, to different representatives. And yes: we will be calling other representatives.
This is the sample script that I wrote back in November, on a different issue and to Barbara Boxer, who has been replaced by Kamala Harris, but it gives you an idea how the Mad-Libs-filling process works:
Hi, {can I ask who I’m speaking to? <, if they don’t say when they pick up>} _[Jot their name down.] _Hi, <their name>. My name is <Ginny Washington>, and I’m one of <Senator Boxer>’s constituents in <West Hollywood>. I wanted to let <Senator Boxer> know that I strongly <support> <her resolution to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College>, because <I think every American’s vote should count equally>. **{I just wanted to thank her for all her hard work on behalf of the principles of equal representation and equal protection under the law.**}
<Thank you so much for your time>! <Have a nice day>!
If you can’t make calls: I recommended before that if you can’t make calls, you copy down snail mail addresses so you can send snail mail letters, and that you grab an email address or online contact link no matter what. Calls are the most effective, if you can make them, but please, do send snail mail letters if you can’t, or an email if you also can’t swing a stamp or get to a post office. You can use the script above as a template for your letter, but you’re probably going to want to default to assuming that your representative opposes you, and you’ll have to of course make it sound like a letter and not a phone convo.
If you care about correct forms of address: weirdly, because these things are super arcane, technically the correct way to address your senator or representative is still “The Honorable <whoever>”, as in, “The Honorable Barbara Boxer.” That goes on the envelope. You can then write “Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms. <whoever>” as your salutation.
As always, the link at the top of the post goes to a poll on Google which makes a great checklist, and where you can check in and let your fellow humans know you’re standing up for them!
Request an independent commission investigation into President Trump's ties to Russia.
The Five Minutes for Freedom series is a collection of small, step-by-step walkthroughs designed to help you take concrete political action in support of the principles of We With Us. The articles in the series are designed to be read and their steps followed in order, as later posts frequently build on earlier ones. A chronological index of all posts in the series can be found here. While this information is targeted primarily at US readers, we welcome readers from all countries and encourage you to adapt these strategies as necessary for your jurisdiction.
5M4F 16: Demand Answers
Request an independent commission investigation into President Trump's, and his campaign staff’s, ties to Russia.
[Dependencies: 5M4F10.]
I’m temporarily putting the second half of the press series on hold because of the urgency of requesting an independent commission investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. If you somehow still need to be convinced that this is an urgent, nonpartisan matter in the national interest, read these four articles and/or, maybe even better, just listen to the “A Cry for Help” episode of Trumpcast. It’s cool, it’s only about half an hour long. I’ll wait. I’d also like you to take note of the fact that Trump launched his 2020 re-election campaign in Florida yesterday. Since he couldn’t get elected the first time without Russian help, it seems pretty fair to me to assume that he’s expecting it again in 2020, don’t you think?
This week we will be calling our representatives to request that they publicly fight for an independent commission, like the 9/11 commission, with subpoena power, to investigate Russian interference in the election and ties between Trump, his campaign staff, and Russia. You will see this phrase many times in this post, because it’s super, super important: we want an independent commission, like the 9/11 commission, with subpoena power. Then we will be recruiting at least two people (each!) to commit to make calls asking their representatives to push for an independent commission, like the 9/11 commission, with subpoena power. Political calling posse!! We will also be calling (separately) to ask our representatives to continue to pressure the White House to fire Steve Bannon, this time because he is a-okay with Putin’s kleptocracy, since Putin is “traditional” and stands with the “Judeo-Christian West” against Islam. I tried to figure out how to fit the word “racist” into that sentence in a way that felt natural but then I realized I’d already said “Steve Bannon” so it probably wasn’t necessary. Speaking of Bannon, I still haven’t written my postcard from last week, so I’ll have two this week: this time, we’ll be concern-trolling “President Bannon,” asking him for an independent commission, like the 9/11 commission, with subpoena power, because Bannon’s aide Donald Trump’s apparent ties to Russia seem to be casting doubts on the legitimacy of Mr. Bannon’s election back in November!
If you’d like to do this all in one go: there are at least two chunks to this one because there are two sets of calls (the first about the independent commission, like the 9/11 commission, with subpoena power, and the second about Steve Bannon). However, other than your second set of calls, writing your scripts and your postcard is pretty easy to do all in one bunch and probably won’t take you much more than 30 or 40 min. How you assemble your political calling posse may be somewhat more time-consuming and may drag on longer, depending on how you live and socialize, but that’s very hard for me to predict without knowing you.
If you’d rather do this five minutes at a time: (1) - all three scripts requesting an independent commission, like the 9/11 commission, with subpoena power - 5 min total. (2), (3), and (4) - call your senator, other senator, and representative requesting an independent commission - 5 min. each. (5) - write your postcard! 5 min. (6) snapshot and mail your postcard - 5 min. (7) - all three scripts requesting that Bannon be fired - 5 min total. (8), (9), and (10) - call your senator, other senator, and representative about Bannon - 5 min. each. (11) - assemble your political calling posse - no idea!! YDY
You’ll notice one structural change of significance in this post: I’ve added a section at the end of particular House representatives and Senators of interest, i.e., the ones whose seats were seen as particularly vulnerable in 2016. These representatives generally fall into two categories: one, they’re Tea Party hardliners who won’t help us out; or two, they’re moderates holding onto mixed or moderate districts. This last group is especially likely to cross party lines in the interests of political expediency, and that can help us, if we get together to put effective pressure on them to swing our way or thank them for holding our line. It can also hurt us, if we don’t. Get out there and call!
Section links:
Call your representatives.
Gather your posse.
Write your postcard to “President Bannon.”
Complain about Bannon to your actual elected representatives.
List of Senate and House Representatives of particular interest.
A note on how to protest amid breaking news.
How to write your scripts.
What to do if you can’t make calls.
Call your representatives: We need an independent commission, like the 9/11 commission, with subpoena power, to investigate ties between Trump, his campaign staff, and Russia. It’s way past time: Flynn’s resignation should have made that explicitly clear to everyone by now. Again: Trump launched his 2020 re-election campaign in Florida yesterday. It isn’t like this business of Russian election interference is somehow magically over.
This kind of investigation was originally proposed back in January, when it seemed like all we had to talk about was the email hack, but it didn’t get off the ground. let’s be really clear about this: Flynn talking to Russian representatives about sanctions before Trump was even in the White House violates every norm we have about the transfer of power between successive administrations (we only have one president at a time! the incoming administration cannot negotiate with foreign governments until they are sworn in). We need for every single person reading this post to contact their representatives, and to get at least two other people to contact their representatives, too: demand that your congressperson publicly back the “Protecting our Democracy” bill introduced by Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and a bunch of other Democrats back in January, and newly backed on Thursday by Representative Walter B. Jones (R-NC), which would establish an independent, nonpartisan commission to investigate Russian interference in the election; and push your senators to also start pushing for an independent commission right away.
The key thing here is the need for an independent commission, like the 9/11 commission, with subpoena power, not more fruitless hamstrung faffing from Congressional Republicans who think reducing taxes for corporations and the 1% is more important than the very real possibility that sensitive information is or has been moving directly from the White House to the intelligence agencies of a foreign government, which, oh, yes, also happens to recently have interfered with our elections. Again: the key phrase here is an independent commission, like the 9/11 commission, with subpoena power. Once more with feeling: an independent commission, like the 9/11 commission, with subpoena power. Say this over and over and over again until it just rolls off your tongue like “I’d like a tall vanilla latte” or “What a beautiful dog!” or “Would you like to go back to my place, Rupert Graves?”
Basically, just make sure to be really, really explicit, when you make your calls: we do not want standing committee investigations; they’re staffed by members of Congress and are therefore not independent, and they often keep information secret. Even a bipartisan select committee is not adequate: the cloud of illegitimacy of Russian interference falls, potentially, on every single official elected in 2016, and that includes every single member of the House, and also a third of the Senate. Make sure your representatives know that’s on your mind, especially if they were elected in 2016.
Gather Your Posse: There are only about a hundred people following this blog; that’s not enough, on its own, to swing anything on our own. But it is enough if each of us recruits two buddies to make these calls with us.
By “recruit” I mean that you talk to them directly, and that you get each of them to affirmatively commit, explicitly, to calling their representatives too. There’s a principle in marketing that if you get someone to give you an affirmative commitment to something small, it both makes them more likely to do the thing that they committed to and it makes them more likely to commit to bigger asks in the future, like, say, voting for anti-Trump pro-human candidates in 2018, and 2020, and 2022. So I’ll start with you guys, before I work offline on getting my parents to commit to call: reblog this post or send us an ask to commit to making your calls this week! It’ll help hold you to it, and we’ll cheer you on! Then get two people, on or offline, RL friends or internet friends, to commit to you that they will make their calls, too.
You don’t have to be an asshole about this at all—in fact, I encourage you to not be an asshole about this—but I will say, if you’ve ever wanted to learn how to be an asshole marketer just to shore up your supervillain powers for the future, this isn’t a bad place to start.
And now for our recurring series, What is Steve Bannon Breaking This Week?
Free and Fair Elections: because Bannon is less obviously and overtly involved with Russia than other parts of Trump’s campaign machinery (though, lbr, he’s still the brains of this operation, so it’s not like he’s totally uninvolved), we’re going to have to approach our postcards and our calls a little bit differently this week.
A bit of concern trolling never goes awry. Start by writing a postcard to “President Bannon” expressing concern about how his aide Donald Trump’s refusal to call for an independent commission, like the 9/11 commission, with subpoena power, to investigate Russian interference is casting a cloud over President Bannon’s legitimate election back in November.
Then complain about Bannon to your actual elected representatives: Take a different tack when you call real politicians. Steve Bannon has publicly lauded Putin’s “traditionalism” as a key “underpinning of nationalism”, while openly admitting the kleptocracy (he even used that word!!) of Putin’s regime. He just doesn’t think it matters, since Russia, like the U.S., is part of the “Judeo-Christian West.” (TRANSLATION: at least Putin is white / hates ladies / isn’t a Muslim!!!) Give your senators and house representative a call to let them know that Putin’s kleptocracy should be appalling to anyone who supports democracy, and that Bannon’s choice of racist ideology over democratic ideals is horrifying for someone on the National Security Council and with a hand on the the puppet strings of the ear of the president. Insist that they speak out publicly against Bannon’s influence.
New feature! I’ve compiled a summary of Senators and Congresspersons of particular interest, i.e., representatives whose seats that were considered “battleground” races in 2016 and are likely to have an especially hard time in 2018/2020/2022. Again, these people likely fall into one of two categories: one, they’re Tea Party hardliners who won’t help us out; or two, they’re moderates holding onto mixed or moderate districts. We want to press that second group, and press them hard, because that is how you swing mixed/moderate districts to the left.
In the parentheses after their names, I’m giving these representatives states, their parties, and their margins of victory in 2016. Note that the list is alphabetical first by state, then by the rep’s name. If your representative(s) is (are) on this list, especially if their margin was especially small, it is particularly important that you put pressure on them, and get other people in your district to put pressure on them too, because your vote could very well be their next swing vote—and they know it. If you contact these people, please either reblog or send me an ask letting me know how it went if you have a second (were they receptive? did you have to jump through hoops to get at them?) and I will compile (anonymously if you wish) that feedback to help other We With Us’ers put pressure where it hurts.
Congresspersons of particular interest (all info from Ballotpedia): Tom O’Halleran (AZ, D, 7.3%), Ami Bera (CA, D, 2.3%), Stephen Knight (CA, R, 6.3%), Darrel Issa (CA, R, 0.5%), Mike Coffman (CO, R, 8.3%), Stephanie Murphy (FL, D, 3%), Brian Mast (FL, R, 10.5%), Carlos Curbelo (FL, R, 11.8%), Brad Schneider (IL, D, 5.2%), Rod Blum (IA, R, 7.7%), Bruce Poliquin (ME, R, 9.6%), Jack Bergman (MI, R, 14.8%), Jason Lewis (MN, R, 1.8%), Don Bacon (NE, R, 1.2%), Jacky Rosen (NV, D, 1.3%), Ruben Kihuen (NV, D, 4%), Carol Shea-Porter (NH, D, 1.3%), Josh Gottheimer (NJ, D, 4.4%), John Faso (NY, R, 8.6%), Claudia Tenney (NY, R, 5.5%), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA, R, 8.9%), Will Hurd (TX, R, 1.3%), Barbara Comstock (VA, R, 5.8%). You can also refer to the lists of DCCC/NRCC targeted incumbents for 2018, though those are much longer and kiiiiind of like the Democrat/Republican letters to Santa, at this point in the game.
Senators of particular interest (all info from Ballotpedia): Marco Rubio (FL, R, 7.7%), Tammy Duckworth (IL, D, 15.1%), Todd Young (IN, R, 9.7%), Roy Blunt (MO, R, 2.8%), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV, D, 2.4%), Maggie Hassan (NH, D, 0.1%), Richard Burr (NC, R, 5.7%), Pat Toomey (PA, R, 1.4%), Ron Johnson (WI, R, 3.4%). Note that none of these senators are up for election again until 2022, and that Democratic senators, writ large, are, right now, feeling much more vulnerable than Republican senators, writ large. Engage thoughtfully if you live in one of the states that appears to have a state-wide rising Republican tide: try to focus on the bipartisan elements of the issues that you’re arguing for—for example, national security and the importance of the legitimacy of the American electoral process, when it comes to this specific issue of Trump’s Russia ties and Russian electoral interference.
Also, for now: don’t contact any of these people if they don’t represent you directly. That can have value when it looks like one of them might be about to make a broader run (e.g. for state-wide office, if they’re in the House; or for the presidency), but for now it’s just going to be a waste of your time.
A note on protesting amid breaking news: As always, I recommend searching a reputable news source, like one of those two news sources you picked in 5M4F15 or The Guardian if you haven’t done that one yet, shortly before you make your calls, for any breaking-news updates that may require you to tweak your scripts. It’s often also useful to check your representatives’ website to see what press releases they have on a given subject, so you know whether (for example) they have already gone on-record as opposing Steve Bannon. If they have? Ask them to do it again. Make it clear that this stuff is important to you.
How to Write Your Scripts (excerpted from 5M4F-5): The basic phone script for calling your representatives goes something like so:
Hi, {can I ask who I’m speaking to? <, if they don’t say when they pick up>} [Jot their name down.] Hi, <their name>. My name is <your name> and I’m one of <your representative’s name>’s constituents in <where you live>. I wanted to let <your representative’s name> know that I strongly <support | oppose> <the thing you’re calling about>, because <succinct explanation of reason why you’re calling>. Is <your representative’s name> planning to <do the thing you want>?
Then you have to plan for a few different responses:
They’re with you: Thank you. Could you please let <appropriate pronoun> know that <expression of gratitude> and <indication that you will continue to watch your representative’s behavior and hold them accountable>?
They’re neutral: This subject is very important to me because <longer, more in-depth and emotive reason why you’re calling>. I would very much appreciate it if you could let <your representative’s name> know that I feel very strongly about this and would really encourage <appropriate pronoun> to <do the thing you want>. Is there any way I could follow up with you or <appropriate pronoun> later?
They oppose you: This subject is very important to me because <longer, more in-depth and emotive reason why you’re calling>. Can I ask why <your representative’s name> is <not doing the thing you want>? [Let them give you a reason, and write it down.] Okay, thank you. I understand <appropriate pronoun> concerns, but as one of <your representative’s name>’s voting constituents, I would really appreciate it if <appropriate pronoun> revisited <appropriate pronoun> decision because <alternate succinct explanation of reason why you’re calling>. Is there any way I could follow up with you or <appropriate pronoun> later?
<expression of gratitude>! <polite send-off>!
I want to point out that you probably don’t actually really need to plan for all of these responses. You can probably make a pretty good guess where your representative stands based on their party affiliation. However, especially if your representatives are moderates and often vote across the aisle, it’s not a bad idea to spend a little time planning for all three cases, because then your behind is covered, and you can recycle this language over and over on later calls, to different representatives. And yes: we will be calling other representatives.
This is the sample script that I wrote back in November, on a different issue and to Barbara Boxer, who has been replaced by Kamala Harris, but it gives you an idea how the Mad-Libs-filling process works:
Hi, {can I ask who I’m speaking to? <, if they don’t say when they pick up>} [Jot their name down.] Hi, <their name>. My name is <Ginny Washington>, and I’m one of <Senator Boxer>’s constituents in <West Hollywood>. I wanted to let <Senator Boxer> know that I strongly <support> <her resolution to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College>, because <I think every American’s vote should count equally>. {I just wanted to thank her for all her hard work on behalf of the principles of equal representation and equal protection under the law.}
<Thank you so much for your time>! <Have a nice day>!
If you can’t make calls: I recommended before that if you can’t make calls, you copy down snail mail addresses so you can send snail mail letters, and that you grab an email address or online contact link no matter what. Calls are the most effective, if you can make them, but please, do send snail mail letters if you can’t, or an email if you also can’t swing a stamp or get to a post office. You can use the script above as a template for your letter, but you’re probably going to want to default to assuming that your representative opposes you, and you’ll have to of course make it sound like a letter and not a phone convo.
If you care about correct forms of address: weirdly, because these things are super arcane, technically the correct way to address your senator or representative is still “The Honorable <whoever>”, as in, “The Honorable Barbara Boxer.” That goes on the envelope. You can then write “Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms. <whoever>” as your salutation.
As always, the link at the top of the post goes to a poll on Google which makes a great checklist, and where you can check in and let your fellow humans know you’re standing up for them!
The Five Minutes for Freedom series is a collection of small, step-by-step walkthroughs designed to help you take concrete political action in support of the principles of We With Us. The articles in the series are designed to be read and their steps followed in order, as later posts frequently build on earlier ones. A chronological index of all posts in the series can be found here. While this information is targeted primarily at US readers, we welcome readers from all countries and encourage you to adapt these strategies as necessary for your jurisdiction.
5M4F 13: Fight for Immigrant Rights
[The wall, the immigration ban, sanctuary cities, + supporting 3rd-party orgs fighting for immigrant rights.]
Dependencies: 5M4F10, (light dependency on) 5M4F9.
I’m a little bit under the weather and running behind on drafting this, so I’m going to try and keep this brief, which is not my strong suit. So. Bear with me.
This week we’re calling to protest the executive orders on the wall and banning immigration from Muslim-majority countries, and we’re going to offer our support to local “sanctuary cities,” whose federal funding is under threat due to another executive order, as applicable. Right now, the organizations on the front lines fighting this stuff directly are the ACLU and immigrant rights organizations like the National Immigration Law Center: the ACLU was the organization helping the two Iraqis held at JFK successfully get a stay for the executive order for immigrants who had already arrived in the country, and many other organizations are also doing good work in this area, so we’re also going to be offering support to those organizations however we can, whether it’s financial support, volunteer hours, and/or getting the word around to our family and friends who may have those resources to spare.
If you want to do this all in one go: unfortunately, these can’t be completely finished all in one go, because of the issue of keeping individual calls to a single representative focused on a single issue. But what you can do is script all your calls together (that you can do today, and it’s basically a copy-paste job, so it shouldn’t be too onerous), then make your calls about the wall on Monday, calls about the immigration ban on Tuesday, et cetera.
If you want to do this five minutes at a time: easier! Your scripts for a single issue will probably only take you about five to ten minutes to assemble, depending on how many calls you have to make, and one call will probably take about five minutes to make. You can sprinkle your scripting throughout the day today, and sprinkle your calls throughout your field offices’ business hours during the week; or script your calls about the wall today, then call about wall and script for the immigration ban Tuesday; whatever.
Note: if you live in a sanctuary city, like I do, in Los Angeles, you are almost certainly going to have more individual calls on that issue than on any other task we’ve had so far. Plan accordingly!
I’ve broken each task down a little more behind the cut. Shortcut links:
The wall.
The immigration ban.
Sanctuary cities.
The ACLU and other third-party organizations.
A note on how to protest amid breaking news.
How to write your scripts.
What to do if you can’t make calls.
I also want to make a quick note, for anyone who is feeling overwhelmed and scared: there’s pretty overwhelming evidence that far from just not having a mandate for these actions, the overwhelming majority of Americans, including the white Americans and men who made up the core of Trump’s supporters, do not support Trump’s racism and xenophobic actions, and that what support he does have has been consistently falling. We aren’t alone. That little ember of hope is something we can fan into a flame, and it doesn’t take a lot to do it.
So don’t do a lot. Do a little.
I really do encourage you to think of this as a group of five-minute tasks. If you only make one five-minute call, that is one five-minute call that would not be made without you. And if you are having a particularly rough week, you can always write emails or letters this week instead of calling, and go back to calling next week. Some people can’t make calls at all, and that’s OK too. Another thing you can do is to talk to your friends and family, and see if you can work through the things on this list together. You don’t have to make your calls alone: you can do it with someone (figuratively or literally!) holding your hand. And if you can bring yourself to discuss these things with your friends and family, you might get them to make calls or write letters and emails, too—and that is how we get things done. More action and more energy fighting on these issues makes us more likely to win.
The wall: The wall between the US and Mexico is part of a broader xenophobic alteration in US immigration enforcement policy that will almost certainly increase racial profiling. It’s also going to be massively expensive, and no matter who builds it and no matter what Trump says about making Mexico pay for it, and whether or not it actually has any deterrent effect on migration, the people who are actually going to pay for it are US taxpayers. Also, it and the associate proposed tariffs may start a trade war with Mexico, and no one wins in a US trade war with Mexico. Make calls to the White House, to your senators, and to your representative in the House to let them know that you strongly object to this racist, ineffective, expensive, and dangerous executive order.
The immigration ban: Continuing our theme of xenophobia and stupidity, the travel ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries (at present: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, though it opens the door for more countries to be added later), including immigrants with legal US visas and holders of US green cards (speaking of breaking news, this literally changed while I was drafting this post), from entering or re-entering the United States is flat-out racist. It also is causing a massive disruption in the lives of many people who have entirely legitimate reasons to enter the US and have in fact upended their lives elsewhere to do so. It blocks the US from accepting Syrian refugees indefinitely, which I feel is a good place to remind everyone about the results of American immigration restrictions in the 1930s (Holocaust cw). The current travel ban is also pointless, since Islamist terrorism is already a smaller threat than home-grown terrorism (e.g. the “sovereign citizens” movement) in the US. While the ACLU has successfully gotten a stay for immigrants who have already arrived in the country, the executive order itself has not been stayed or overturned, and visa holders outside the country are still not being permitted to enter. Make calls to the White House, to your senators, and to your representative in the House to let them know that you strongly object to this racist, disruptive, dangerous, and pointless executive order.
Sanctuary cities: There’s a good rundown on sanctuary cities on the NY Times, but the short version is this: some jurisdictions (states, cities, counties) in the US have put limits on how much their local law enforcement officers can or are expected to enforce federal immigration law. Not only is it not their job, codifying these restrictions improves the relationship between immigrant communities and local law enforcement, making it so that communities with large undocumented populations can report crimes and rely on the police to enforce public safety without worrying that if they report a break-in, the cops will end up deporting Grandma because she doesn’t have papers. Sanctuary status interpreted more broadly also means that other local public institutions, like public universities, can provide equal access to services to everyone who walks in the door without screening them to see whether or not they’re in the country legally. I should note that this is the constitutional right of state and local jurisdictions, which cannot be compelled to enforce federal mandates themselves.
Make calls to the White House, to your senators, and to your representative in the House to let them know that you strongly object to the federal government’s unconstitutional effort to strip federal funding from sanctuary cities. If you live in a sanctuary city/county/state (see the NY Times article linked above), you also should make calls to your relevant city/county/state representatives to let them know that you support their efforts to maintain sanctuary status for your city/county/state. If you don’t live in a sanctuary city/county/state, but you live in a community with a large undocumented population, you could also make calls to your relevant city/county/state representatives urging them to adopt sanctuary status in defiance of federal actions, though I don’t entirely know how this would work.
[I do also recommend that, if you are a student at a university that has declared itself a sanctuary campus, you write a quick note to your chancellor or whatever other person or body has made that declaration thanking them for protecting the rights of undocumented students, but that’s not officially going on as a task because it probably applies to a pretty small subset of people reading this post.]
The ACLU and other third-party organizations: If you’ve done 5M4F9, “Assess Your Resources,” you may have already decided to kick some time or money over to the ACLU or immigrant and/or Muslim rights organizations (partial list of orgs we recommend over here) on some kind of schedule or under some conditions, but if you haven’t done 5M4F9, now’s a good time to dig around under the sofa cushions and see what you can send their way to help fund legal fights, or see if they need volunteers in your neck of the woods. If you haven’t got money or time, but you can spread the word about the need for funding and volunteers, do that instead. Social media’s not everything, but it’s not nothing, either.
I’m not going to say that everyone can find money, or can find time, because that frankly isn’t true, but I do encourage you to be honest with yourself about where you can maybe find some money, or some time, if it’s possible. It doesn’t have to be a lot—a little is better than nothing at all.
A note on protesting amid breaking news: Because I can’t know when, precisely, you’ll actually make your individual calls, the exact nature of how you protest these executive orders may need to change a little bit based on what’s happened with legal challenges and so forth by the time you’re calling.
When you call the White House, you can make it clear that you object to the executive orders themselves, because Trump has control over them and can himself rescind them. But this is a little bit different from making calls for the confirmation processes because executive orders bypass the House and Senate, so when you call the House and Senate, it’s more like calling your House representatives during Senate confirmation hearings. You want to urge your representatives to go on-record as opposing the executive orders if they haven’t already; or be thanking them for doing so, depending on what if any statements they’ve made publicly, and making it clear to them that you continue to watch their statements and voting behavior to see whether or not they will have your vote in 2018 (or 2020, or 2022).
Anyway, to handle how fast this is moving, I recommend that you plan on searching a reputable news source, like The Guardian, shortly before you make your calls, for any breaking-news updates that may require you to tweak your scripts. It’s often also useful to check your representatives’ website to see what press releases they have on a given subject, so you know whether (for example) they have already gone on-record as opposing the wall.
How to Write Your Scripts (excerpted from 5M4F-5):
The basic phone script for calling your representatives goes something like so:
Hi, {can I ask who I’m speaking to? <, if they don’t say when they pick up>} [Jot their name down.] Hi, <their name>. My name is <your name> and I’m one of <your representative’s name>’s constituents in <where you live>. I wanted to let <your representative’s name> know that I strongly <support | oppose> <the thing you’re calling about>, because <succinct explanation of reason why you’re calling>. Is <your representative’s name> planning to <do the thing you want>?
Then you have to plan for a few different responses:
They’re with you: Thank you. Could you please let <appropriate pronoun> know that <expression of gratitude> and <indication that you will continue to watch your representative’s behavior and hold them accountable>?
They’re neutral: This subject is very important to me because <longer, more in-depth and emotive reason why you’re calling>. I would very much appreciate it if you could let <your representative’s name> know that I feel very strongly about this and would really encourage <appropriate pronoun> to <do the thing you want>. Is there any way I could follow up with you or <appropriate pronoun> later?
They oppose you: This subject is very important to me because <longer, more in-depth and emotive reason why you’re calling>. Can I ask why <your representative’s name> is <not doing the thing you want>? [Let them give you a reason, and write it down.] Okay, thank you. I understand <appropriate pronoun> concerns, but as one of <your representative’s name>’s voting constituents, I would really appreciate it if <appropriate pronoun> revisited <appropriate pronoun> decision because <alternate succinct explanation of reason why you’re calling>. Is there any way I could follow up with you or <appropriate pronoun> later?
<expression of gratitude>! <polite send-off>!
I want to point out that you probably don’t actually really need to plan for all of these responses. You can probably make a pretty good guess where your representative stands based on their party affiliation. However, especially if your representatives are moderates and often vote across the aisle, it’s not a bad idea to spend a little time planning for all three cases, because then your behind is covered, and you can recycle this language over and over on later calls, to different representatives. And yes: we will be calling other representatives.
This is the sample script that I wrote back in November, on a different issue and to Barbara Boxer, who has been replaced by Kamala Harris, but it gives you an idea how the Mad-Libs-filling process works:
Hi, {can I ask who I’m speaking to? <, if they don’t say when they pick up>} [Jot their name down.] Hi, <their name>. My name is <Ginny Washington>, and I’m one of <Senator Boxer>’s constituents in <West Hollywood>. I wanted to let <Senator Boxer> know that I strongly <support> <her resolution to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College>, because <I think every American’s vote should count equally>. {I just wanted to thank her for all her hard work on behalf of the principles of equal representation and equal protection under the law.}
<Thank you so much for your time>! <Have a nice day>!
If you can’t make calls: I recommended before that if you can’t make calls, you copy down snail mail addresses so you can send snail mail letters, and that you grab an email address or online contact link no matter what. Calls are the most effective, if you can make them, but please, do send snail mail letters if you can’t, or an email if you also can’t swing a stamp or get to a post office. You can use the script above as a template for your letter, but you’re probably going to want to default to assuming that your representative opposes you, and you’ll have to of course make it sound like a letter and not a phone convo.
If you care about correct forms of address: weirdly, because these things are super arcane, technically the correct way to address your senator or representative is still “The Honorable <whoever>”, as in, “The Honorable Barbara Boxer.” That goes on the envelope. You can then write “Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms. <whoever>” as your salutation.
Support and communicate with critical press organizations; oppose Steve Bannon.
The Five Minutes for Freedom series is a collection of small, step-by-step walkthroughs designed to help you take concrete political action in support of the principles of We With Us. The articles in the series are designed to be read and their steps followed in order, as later posts frequently build on earlier ones. A chronological index of all posts in the series can be found here. While this information is targeted primarily at US readers, we welcome readers from all countries and encourage you to adapt these strategies as necessary for your jurisdiction.
5M4F 15: Back a Free and Fearless Press (Part 1)
[Support critical press organizations; oppose Steve Bannon.]
Dependencies: 5M4F9, 5M4F10.
This week’s 5M4F is somewhat abbreviated because Tumblr ate about 9/10ths of the original post and I don’t have time to completely rewrite it, thanks Tumblr. It’s also the first post in a series: this is the week where we get to be supportive and loving and cheerleader-pom-poms for the American news media, but next week, I’m going to talk about how you can engage with and constructively respond to failures and missteps in the American news media, which is the other half of this specific “Back a Free and Fearless Press“ task.
So. This week, we are all going to pick out at least two primary news sources, at least one of which qualifies as a potential American “paper of record” (term used loosely). Then we’re going to round up some support for the sources in our new personal news network, by directly paying for our subscriptions and/or by explaining on social media and in person why paying for news is important and why our friends and family should do pay for news, too.
We are also going to write some postcards to our new friend in the White House, President Steve Bannon, asking him to rein in his aide Donald Trump.
If you want to do this all in one go: This one is probably easiest to do in a block, because I want you to spend some time investigating your options for primary and secondary news sources, and that’ll take some time. So I’d recommend that you start by skimming through the headlines on the websites for the “paper of record” list, read a couple articles from each source, and think about them: do these articles cover things that are newsworthy and important? How are those newsworthy and important things covered in (e.g.) the New York Times versus the Washington Post? Is there implicit bias being communicated in the headline? In the word choice? In the structure of the article, e.g., are they burying the lede? There’s a good starter guide to evaluating news sources over here at The University of Texas Libraries, but they don’t go into subtle bias very deeply—though, of course, subtle bias is often very hard to detect, so mostly it requires you to be an active and thoughtful reader. End goal? Pick a source on the “paper of record” list whose medium and coverage works for you. Then do the same thing to pick your second source. Once you’ve got your sources picked out, kick ‘em some cash if you can, and, either way, spread the word. Writing a postcard to Bannon, snapshotting it, and posting to social media is another quickie task you can tuck in there kind of wherever. Scripting a call takes five minutes and calls, as always, should be single-issue, but we’re really only calling about Bannon this week, so that’s easier than it’s been, some weeks.
If you want to do this five minutes at a time: Probably the best way to do this in chunks is to tier it: start by reading the University of Texas Libraries guide to evaluating news sources, so you know what you’re looking for. You may have to split that into chunks, depending on how fast you read, but it has good divisions within the page, so that should be doable. Then, spend some time surveying and comparing the headlines across the sources on the “paper of record” list. You may have to do this in multiple chunks, too, and you may want to take some notes (e.g.: “Main headline 8 am NYT: “One-Party Rule”; NPR: “North Korea Missile Test”). Then, select some articles—ideally some articles that overlap in coverage—to read and compare from those multiple sources, and open them in tabs or bookmark them or whatever. Then read those articles in 5-minute chunks until you feel good picking your primary news source. Same thing for your secondary news source. Once you have your news sources picked, subscribing to one will take less than 5 minutes. Tweeting or posting to Facebook or Tumblr about why paying for news is important will take about 5 minutes. Writing your postcard to Bannon will probably take 5 minutes. Another 5 minutes to take a photo of it and social media-ify it. Then the imponderable: how long to get to a post office or mailbox and send it off? That, I don’t know. Your script to oppose Bannon because he doesn’t support a free press will take five minutes to write. Another five minutes apiece for each of your calls.
Section links:
Pick a democracy-critical primary news source.
Pick a reliable secondary news source.
Support your new newsy friends.
Write to (and call about) "President Steve Bannon" re: Freedom of the Press.
Pick a democracy-critical primary news source: The part of this post I least have the time to reconstruct is all my sources for why I am recommending four specific media outlets as standing in place of a “paper of record,” and why I think that everyone reading this needs to pick one of these specific four sources and give them some support. So, short version, no sources cited: the American news media is a flawed but critical institution that pushes back against politics when politics is misbehaving, and does necessary work to shape American political discourse. But that works best when there is consensus about what constitutes reliable, accurate journalism, and what media sources provide that reliable, accurate journalism, in part because fringe and fake news sites gain traction by undermining the financial health of real news outlets, whose purpose and goal is to provide real news. So, the best way to counter that war of attrition is to come together and funnel the bulk of our support to a limited number of mainstream, moderate, and competent news sources, to ensure that they have the resources to succeed, because their work and their expertise is necessary to prop up democracy when Washington isn’t functioning as it ought.
Like now!
I lied, I will give you two sources, but they’re both podcast episodes, which I know can be annoying, so you’ll just have to dig around yourselves to hear what, specifically, they say about the news media: “A Message from Moscow” (Slate’s Trumpcast) and the “Caudillo-In-Chief?“ section in particular from the episode “The View From Here” (Latino USA).
So. Here is my list, for which I swear I have sources, of the media outlets that can, in 2017, be considered to serve in some part as an American “paper of record”: the New York Times, NPR, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Pick one source on this list to be your primary news source and to primarily receive your support.
Note that all of these are old media news sources, native to the US, with long publishing histories and at least two editions: a digital edition and a print edition for the papers or a radio “edition” for NPR. They are also widely respected both here and abroad, and they value unbiased news, though again, there is some room for debate about how well and universally they achieve that goal, which we’ll talk about more next week. They also all publish general news (i.e., they don’t have a content slant, like the Wall Street Journal, another paper that is often described as an American paper of record but specifically focuses on business and economic news). The New York Times runs ads and is behind a paywall after you’ve read 10 articles a month; the others don’t paywall quite that way, but do still rely on both subscriber and advertiser or sponsor support. They all pay their journalists, freelance or otherwise, and have standards and ethics guidelines for contributors: that means that what they publish is the product of professional, expert journalists producing professional, expert journalism. This is exactly what we need, in 2017.
I specifically want to talk about the difference between professional journalists (like reporters at the NY Times) and amateurs and bloggers (like me). When you pay a professional to do something, part of what you pay for is just straight-up expertise: if you need brain surgery you don’t trust a dude with a XL tub of baby wipes and a sharp—really, he swears, just extremely sharp—knife. Expertise matters, but it doesn’t come cheap. I want to know that the person covering what’s going on in Washington has had some training in narrowing in on stories and evidence that matters, and in sorting out fiction from reality—especially this Washington, where lies come faster than radar can track, because I sure as hell don’t have the time to sort it all out for myself.
But the other thing that you’re paying for is just for the ability for the person you’re paying to value the thing you’re paying for. I don’t get paid to maintain this blog. I have grad school stuff to do today, so I’m not going to spend another two hours reconstructing every link Tumblr ate. Grad school is more important to me: it has to be. It’s my job, my professional life. Sure, this site matters to me, but when push comes to shove, I’m going to put my professional obligations first. I want the people covering the news for me to put covering the news for me first. And the only way to make that happen is to make sure that they get paid for doing it, that they can make a life doing it, that covering the news for me is what pays their rent and feeds their kids. Because that shit has to happen—so that means news can’t be free.
Pick a reliable secondary news source: You may note that the list above is very brief; again, it has to be, because the goal is to try and funnel money and page views and ad revenues to a small set of sources. But that doesn’t mean that those are the only sources of reliable news in America. For your secondary source, you can of course pick another paper on that very short list, but you should feel free to go wider afield. However, you want your secondary news source to also publish content from professional (paid) journalists (i.e., not the Huffington Post), and to be reliable and authoritative. By “go wider afield” I mean that you can pick a news source that has a slant, like the Wall Street Journal; or isn’t US based, like The Guardian; or is a news magazine with commentary instead of just straight-up reporting, like Slate or The Economist** (twofer, since the Economist is also UK based); or is for another major market but not quite as widely read, like the Boston Globe or the Chicago Tribune; or is new media, like a podcast, like PRI’s The World or Slate’s Trumpcast (also has a political commentary slant) or Marketplace (also has an economics slant). That’s not a complete list, but I do urge you to stay away from TV news. Why? Well, when I was drafting this the first time (*grumble*), the main website headlines on NPR and the NY Times and the Guardian were about, respectively, the North Korean missile test, the GOP’s rapid exercise of power in the states where they have one-party control, and Trudeau’s meeting with Trump. The main website headline on CBS News was about passengers getting off a plane after a pilot ranted over the intercom. One of these things is not like the others.
[** As a sidenote, I love The Economist as a secondary news source, because it’s conservative-leaning and that’s useful for pinko commie scum like me, and also because their cover images are a m a z i n g.]
Anyway. Long story short: pick a secondary news source! Make it something you like to read or listen to! You’re going to be spending some time with it.
Optionally, you may also want to select a third news source whose coverage is more localized, either literally (i.e. your city) or figuratively (i.e. your demographic group) or both. If you live in a market not well covered by the big papers, your local or neighborhood newspaper or radio station in particular is going to be really important to you in helping you stay informed on local politics and ballot measures that are tremendously important, but not going to be covered in the Los Angeles Times. (I live in L.A., and the L.A. Times still doesn’t cover everything going on in my neighborhood.)
Support your new newsy friends: Once you’ve got your news sources picked out, subscribe to them: both in the sense of, set yourself up to receive updates (set your car radio! subscribe to headline emails!) and in the sense of, give them some money, if you are financially able. This is where 5M4F9 comes into things: if you were able to scrounge up some available cash in that process, here is a good place to spend it. However, if money’s not something you have enough of to give, you can still help out: talk about your news sources with your friends and family, either in person or on social media, and encourage them to give their support to the news that matters in our democracy. Ask for a subscription to your news source of choice for your birthday or for Valentine’s Day or for graduation, whatever. Band together with friends and buy a subscription to share. Set up your ad blocker to not run on the web pages of the news sources of your choice, so they don’t lose ad revenue on you. Call or write to your local library and ask if they subscribe to your news source, and if they don’t, encourage them to start. The important thing is that you get the word out, and that we start talking, publicly, about how paying for professional, expert news written by professional, expert journalists is an important part of keeping our democracy running.
For me, personally, my primary news source is NPR, specifically my local affiliate, KCRW. My secondary news source, as you may have gathered since it is the primary news source I use on this site, is The Guardian. I don’t consider The Guardian my primary news source because (a) it’s UK-based, though its US edition is excellent, but again: we specifically need to support the American press; and (b) like most Angelenos, I spend a lot of time in my car. However, I subscribe to The Guardian’s daily headline emails and I read in the app a lot when I’m waiting for things. I also read The Economist on occasion (I can’t swing paying for it, but my parents subscribe) and listen to about 20 thousand podcasts, see above re: time spent in my car. I’m a paying supporter of both NPR and The Guardian, though in both cases that has been true and not true for a long time, depending on my current financial situation. When I graduated from high school I did indeed ask, for a gift, for my parents to help me become a member of the NPR affiliate for my college’s area. And they gave it to me! I think I got a t-shirt, too.
And now for our recurring series, What is Steve Bannon Breaking This Week?
Freedom of the Press: While this isn’t quite as up to the minute as last week, and I still urge anyone who hasn’t called about his appointment to the National Security Council to do so ASAP, Bannon telling the press to shut up is very much in keeping with our theme, so let’s stick with it. Write a postcard to "President Steve Bannon”, rebuking him for telling the free American press to “keep its mouth shut,” when the free press is a cornerstone of American democracy and progress. Make sure you also ask him to rein in his aide Donald Trump, who frequently also takes to Twitter to make baseless attacks upon the press. Before you pop your postcard in the mail, take a quick snapshot of it (both sides, if the front’s cute too) and share it on social media (#PostcardsToBannon).
More seriously, this also merits calling your senators and congressperson to urge them to go on the record as opposing Steve Bannon’s position in the White House, this time because of his attacks on the press. I don’t have time to rewrite all of this stuff, so I’m just going to link you back to his section on last week’s post for the how-to.
As always, the link at the top of the post goes to a poll on Google which makes a great checklist, and where you can check in and let your fellow humans know you’re standing up for them!
Support freedom of information for government agencies; oppose Steve Bannon.
The Five Minutes for Freedom series is a collection of small, step-by-step walkthroughs designed to help you take concrete political action in support of the principles of We With Us. The articles in the series are designed to be read and their steps followed in order, as later posts frequently build on earlier ones. A chronological index of all posts in the series can be found here. While this information is targeted primarily at US readers, we welcome readers from all countries and encourage you to adapt these strategies as necessary for your jurisdiction.
5M4F 14: Support Actual Facts.
[Support freedom of information for government agencies; oppose Steve Bannon.]
Dependencies: 5M4F10, (light dependency on) 5M4F9.
This week’s 5M4F has an online component and our now-usual phone calls component. We’re going to be following and sharing online information from the scientists and civil servants who are standing up against the Trump administration’s gag orders on government agencies, and we’re going to be letting our representatives and the White House know that those government agencies don’t work for Trump: they work for us, the American people. I’m also adding on as a tag a mini-task to oppose Steve Bannon, which may become a theme around here, because Bannon is using the understandable and necessary outrage about everything else the administration is doing to quietly amass power. So let’s make some noise about it, shall we?
If you want to do this all in one go: as always, it’s not possible to make all the calls in one go, because we want to keep individual calls focused on a single issue. But you can do all your scripting in one go with all the online tasks, and then you can make your four calls about scientific freedom at the EPA et cetera in one block on Monday and your calls about Bannon in one block on Tuesday, or whatever.
If you want to do this five minutes at a time: easier! All scripts on one topic will probably take you 5 minutes to assemble, so 5 minutes for scientific freedom, and another 5 minutes to oppose Bannon. One call will probably take you five minutes to make, so that’s four five-minute chunks per issue on two issues, a total of eight 5-minute calls. Following all of the governmental agency resistance social media accounts at once will probably take you 5 minutes. Sharing that information on social media is another 5-minute task. Signing the petitions together will take about 5 minutes. It can seem like a lot of tasks, but they’re all individually pretty small!
If you have extra time, you can get some extra cosmic human-helping brownie points for making some extra calls opposing Betsy DeVos and Neil Gorsuch. I’m not making full posts on either of them simply because I feel like the reasons for opposing them have been covered pretty extensively elsewhere and I try to keep each week’s number discrete 5M4F tasks to ≤4. But please do call if you can.
As I mentioned a few days ago, since the White House comment line has been shut down, you can make your White House calls by either trying a direct line to a White House staffer or a randomly-selected Trump business holding. I continue to recommend that if you can’t get through to discuss political issues (and maybe even if you can), you write an open letter to the Trump White House, cc your senators and representative, and also send a copy to the Government Accountability Office. If this sounds like a nuisance tactic, you’re right! That is exactly what it is! Disabling the White House comment line and running the presidency like an autocracy deserves every inconvenience we can possibly throw their way!!
Section links:
Make calls about scientific freedom at governmental organizations.
Petition for scientific freedom at governmental organizations.
Spread the word about fighting for scientific freedom at governmental organizations.
Complain about Steve Bannon.
A note on how to protest amid breaking news.
How to write your scripts.
What to do if you can’t make calls.
Call your representatives to support scientific freedom at governmental organizations: You probably know the drill by now: ring the local field offices of your senators and your congressperson, as well as the “White House comment line” of your choice, telling them that scientific freedom at governmental organizations like the EPA matters to you.
Here’s my usual rundown of why you should call: while it is typical for governmental organizations like the EPA to temporarily halt public-facing updates (Twitter, press releases, et cetera) during a transition between administrations, it is very far from typical to subject governmental data to political review. The spokesman for Trump’s transition team at the EPA has said that the policy there at least (and very possibly at other organizations as well) will be to subject governmental data to political review. When speaking to NPR, he declined to characterize this policy as temporary. He then told the AP that the hold on public releases was temporary and that there was “no mandate” for subjecting data to political review. If that sequence of events makes you nervous: me too! I have intense social anxiety, especially with crowds, and I’m still seriously considering flying to Washington for the March for Science.
American governmental organizations gather, aggregate, and share critical data and research for multiple sectors of society and industry. This data includes climate and weather data, public health information, data about the economy and U.S. financial health, jobs and labor market data, education access and achievement information, and many many others. Users include not only research universities and public institutions, but also private corporate and non-profit users like Google and Bloomberg and AccuWeather and PossibilityU and Redfin and Ecodesk (source). Government data isn’t just essential to our understanding and handling of issues critical to human survival, like climate change; it also builds and supports private industry. It creates jobs. This is a bipartisan issue if we’ve ever covered one: our country, both our people and our economy, depends on the ability of government scientists to produce accurate, unbiased, nonpoliticized data, without fear of reprisal, retribution, or political censorship.
Call your representatives and let them know.
Petition the White House: There’s a petition on We the People, the White House’s official petitions website, to ask the White House to give government agencies the freedom to share information with Congress and the American public. Ostensibly your signature is being captured even though the count doesn’t update, but I believe this administration as far as I can throw them; so here is a backup of that petition on Change.org. You should sign both the White House petition and the Change.org petition, so we can verify signature counts.
Social Media: If you use Twitter, you can follow and share relevant #Resistance Twitter accounts, e.g.:
AltUSEPA
altNOAA
AltUSDA
Alt_CDC
Alt_NIH
AltHHS
AltForestServ
...and more! I’m not really a Twitter user (I mean, there is a We With Us Twitter but I hate Twitter and am also bad at using it), so I encourage actual Twitter-using people to let me know about other Twitter places where science jedis are currently gathering. The March for Science is also on Facebook, which is another social media platform I dislike and don’t use!! But if you use it you can follow and share it over there. Presumably if you’re here you know how to use Tumblr; you can track relevant Tumblr tags like #march for science and #science resists and so on, and share that information with your friends—whether or not you, yourself, are up to marching. If you did 5M4F9, revisit your network. Where can you share this? Who can you talk to? What friends and family do you have who are willing to listen to you? Talk to them about why freedom of information in governmental agencies is important. Encourage them to protest, and call, and petition, and resist.
And now for what I suspect is going to be a weekly feature for the foreseeable future, which I think I’m going to call: What is Steve Bannon Breaking This Week? Answer:
The NSC: Steve Bannon, Trump’s favorite white-supremacist gnome, has been granted a permanent seat on the National Security Council, while the director of national intelligence and chairman of the joint chiefs will only be expected occasionally. That’s really bad. The NSC bears the main responsibility for advising the president in matters of peace and war; positions on the NSC are typically reserved for generals and national security and military officials of outstanding expertise. Bannon does not have expertise. What he does have is deep-seated racist, Islamophobic, and anti-immigrant views, and a bald and oft-stated desire for another major (read: world) war. He’s also extremely sympathetic to Russia, because he views them as America’s white Christian allies in the war on Islam.
Call your representatives (senators, congressperson, and the “White House comment line” of your choice) and let them know that a fascist, warmongering, white supremacist has no place in the White House and no place on the National Security Council.
A note on protesting amid breaking news: While nothing here is quite as time sensitive as the confirmation hearings (which: if you have time to make a couple extra calls protesting Betsy DeVos and Neil Gorsuch, please please please please do), I do still recommend searching a reputable news source, like The Guardian, shortly before you make your calls, for any breaking-news updates that may require you to tweak your scripts. It’s often also useful to check your representatives’ website to see what press releases they have on a given subject, so you know whether (for example) they have already gone on-record as opposing Steve Bannon. If they have? Ask them to do it again.
How to Write Your Scripts (excerpted from 5M4F-5):
The basic phone script for calling your representatives goes something like so:
Hi, {can I ask who I’m speaking to? <, if they don’t say when they pick up>} [Jot their name down.] Hi, <their name>. My name is <your name> and I’m one of <your representative’s name>’s constituents in <where you live>. I wanted to let <your representative’s name> know that I strongly <support | oppose> <the thing you’re calling about>, because <succinct explanation of reason why you’re calling>. Is <your representative’s name> planning to <do the thing you want>?
Then you have to plan for a few different responses:
They’re with you: Thank you. Could you please let <appropriate pronoun> know that <expression of gratitude> and <indication that you will continue to watch your representative’s behavior and hold them accountable>?
They’re neutral: This subject is very important to me because <longer, more in-depth and emotive reason why you’re calling>. I would very much appreciate it if you could let <your representative’s name> know that I feel very strongly about this and would really encourage <appropriate pronoun> to <do the thing you want>. Is there any way I could follow up with you or <appropriate pronoun> later?
They oppose you: This subject is very important to me because <longer, more in-depth and emotive reason why you’re calling>. Can I ask why <your representative’s name> is <not doing the thing you want>? [Let them give you a reason, and write it down.] Okay, thank you. I understand <appropriate pronoun> concerns, but as one of <your representative’s name>’s voting constituents, I would really appreciate it if <appropriate pronoun> revisited <appropriate pronoun> decision because <alternate succinct explanation of reason why you’re calling>. Is there any way I could follow up with you or <appropriate pronoun> later?
<expression of gratitude>! <polite send-off>!
I want to point out that you probably don’t actually really need to plan for all of these responses. You can probably make a pretty good guess where your representative stands based on their party affiliation. However, especially if your representatives are moderates and often vote across the aisle, it’s not a bad idea to spend a little time planning for all three cases, because then your behind is covered, and you can recycle this language over and over on later calls, to different representatives. And yes: we will be calling other representatives.
This is the sample script that I wrote back in November, on a different issue and to Barbara Boxer, who has been replaced by Kamala Harris, but it gives you an idea how the Mad-Libs-filling process works:
Hi, {can I ask who I’m speaking to? <, if they don’t say when they pick up>} [Jot their name down.] Hi, <their name>. My name is <Ginny Washington>, and I’m one of <Senator Boxer>’s constituents in <West Hollywood>. I wanted to let <Senator Boxer> know that I strongly <support> <her resolution to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College>, because <I think every American’s vote should count equally>. {I just wanted to thank her for all her hard work on behalf of the principles of equal representation and equal protection under the law.}
<Thank you so much for your time>! <Have a nice day>!
If you can’t make calls: I recommended before that if you can’t make calls, you copy down snail mail addresses so you can send snail mail letters, and that you grab an email address or online contact link no matter what. Calls are the most effective, if you can make them, but please, do send snail mail letters if you can’t, or an email if you also can’t swing a stamp or get to a post office. You can use the script above as a template for your letter, but you’re probably going to want to default to assuming that your representative opposes you, and you’ll have to of course make it sound like a letter and not a phone convo.
If you care about correct forms of address: weirdly, because these things are super arcane, technically the correct way to address your senator or representative is still “The Honorable <whoever>”, as in, “The Honorable Barbara Boxer.” That goes on the envelope. You can then write “Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms. <whoever>” as your salutation.
As always, the link at the top of the post goes to a poll on Google which makes a great checklist, and where you can check in and let your fellow humans know you’re standing up for them!
Protest by Phone (Round 2): Sessions, Tillerson, Bannon, and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act
The Five Minutes for Freedom series is a collection of small, step-by-step walkthroughs designed to help you take concrete political action in support of the principles of We With Us. The articles in the series are designed to be read and their steps followed in order, as later posts frequently build on earlier ones. A chronological index of all posts in the series can be found here. While this information is targeted primarily at US readers, we welcome readers from all countries and encourage you to adapt these strategies as necessary for your jurisdiction.
5M4F 11: Protest by Phone (Round 2)
[Sessions, Tillerson, Bannon, and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act]
Dependencies: 5M4F10.
(TIME SENSITIVE)
I posted a preview of this when the Senate confirmation hearings started on Tuesday, but I’ll give you the full run down here: this week and next (at least), your 5M4F tasks will be to script, and then make, calls to your representatives to ask them to rigorously vet and ultimately reject the confirmation of Trump’s most dangerous cabinet and White House appointments, to protest those appointments after the fact, and/or to object to top-level legislative priorities of the incoming administration.
Two of the appointments you’ll be protesting this week are cabinet appointments and require Senate approval: Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson (nominated for Attorney General and Secretary of State, respectively). The third, Steve Bannon, is being appointed to a White House position that does not require Senate approval, but you still need to call your representatives and put pressure on them to act in opposition to his appointment. Your voice is also urgently needed to halt the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
The basic thrust of the task is pretty simple: write yourself a script that you can use to walk you through your calls to your representatives (there is an in-depth breakdown of this process in 5M4F5, which is also excerpted behind the cut), then give your local field offices a series of calls to protest these appointments. To be most effective, you want to only call your representatives about one issue at a time, so you will need to make multiple calls throughout the week to best keep your calls focused and to the point.
I also strongly urge you to share this information with your friends and family offline and encourage them to join you in making calls with you. Our goal should be to keep the phones ringing at every field office in the country, all week long, demanding that our elected representatives do their jobs, i.e., represent us.
If you want to do this all in one go: unfortunately, these can’t be completely finished all in one go, because of the issue of keeping individual calls focused on a single issue. Also, it is probable that your local field office will be closed on Monday because of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. But what you can do is script all your calls together (that you can do today, and it’s basically a copy-paste job, so it shouldn’t be too onerous), then make your three calls about Sessions in one block on Tuesday, your three calls about Tillerson in one block on Wednesday, et cetera.
If you want to do this five minutes at a time: easier! Your three scripts for a single appointee will probably only take you about five minutes to assemble, and one call will probably take about five minutes to make. You can sprinkle your scripting throughout the day today, and sprinkle your calls throughout your field offices’ business hours during the week; or script your calls about Sessions today, then call about Sessions and script for Tillerson Tuesday; whatever.
You might want to actually make your ACA calls first, potentially—as I understand it, the actual confirmations of Sessions and Tillerson can't happen until just after the inauguration. They can do more harm to the ACA before that.
There is some starter info on each of the four nominees/appointees/issues, with reasons to call about them, behind the cut; as well as a template for your scripts, and some info about what to do if you can’t make calls. Shortcut links:
Jeff Sessions.
Rex Tillerson.
Steve Bannon.
The Affordable Care Act.
A note on how to protest amid breaking news.
How to write your scripts.
What to do if you can’t make calls.
Once you've made your calls, check in on this week's poll to let your fellow humans know you've got their backs!
Jeff Sessions (nominated for Attorney General): Jeff Sessions has a long history of racist remarks and is virulently anti-immigrant. Paraphrasing from that article: his only problem with the KKK is that they smoke weed, and he opposes both amnesty for undocumented workers and in fact legal immigration as well, arguing that it depresses wages and swells welfare rolls, neither of which is true. He also doesn’t believe in man-made climate change, and since climate change has a greater impact on the poor and other vulnerable groups than it does on wealthy and privileged groups, climate change is in fact a human rights issue. He also supports banning Muslim immigration to the United States and will almost certainly work to dismantle the progress that has been made under the Obama Administration in almost every area of criminal justice reform and civil rights. This post on The Guardian tracks the questions put to Sessions during his confirmation hearings on Jan. 10-11th and the concerns raised about his record and may be useful to you in identifying the role your senators are playing in the process.
Rex Tillerson (nominated for Secretary of State): Tillerson is not only historically unqualified to be Secretary of State, he also has a history of acting in direct opposition to American foreign policy interests in Iraq and deep, long-term ties to Russian state businesses and political operators, which should be really, really worrying no matter where you fall on the political spectrum. Let’s be really clear: this isn’t “red-baiting”. The reason why everyone reading this should be very concerned about the new administration’s affection for and deference to Russia is because—directly quoting from that NY Times article—”...today’s Russia isn’t Communist, or even leftist; it’s just an authoritarian state, with a cult of personality around its strongman, that showers benefits on an immensely wealthy oligarchy while brutally suppressing opposition and criticism.“ Lest you still believe that Russia is a country that is on the side of the left: Russia has incredibly restrictive laws against LGBTQ people, scores 148 out of 180 in the world in rankings of countries by the degree of freedom afforded to the press, and is currently moving to decriminalize domestic violence. It also directly interfered with our ability to hold a free and fair election, not just via hacking but also manipulating not only Trump but also Jill Stein, because the importance of the third-party vote in taking down Hillary Clinton. Russia is not a friend to American interests (or EU interests, or NATO interests)—but it is a friend to Exxon-Mobile. All of this, particularly when combined with Tillerson’s track record of failing to prioritize American interests, means that his confirmation would directly threaten your rights and the rights of your fellow humans. This post on The Guardian covers some of the key details from his confirmation hearing on Wednesday; their liveblog of the confirmation hearing is much more detailed (recommended) but also covers the Trump press conference, since it was going on at the same time, so some of the details of the confirmation hearing itself are getting buried. (Note: this is probably not an accident.)
Steve Bannon (appointed as Chief Strategist and Chief Counsel): Steve Bannon is a racist, xenophobe, misogynist, and anti-Semite, darling of the KKK, whose only qualification is spreading fake conspiracy news a.k.a. racist propaganda on the internet. He also has extraordinary sway over Donald Trump. Steve Bannon is really, really dangerous. We need to keep him from ever getting to the White House. However, because he’s not being appointed to a position that requires Senate confirmation, when you’re making your calls about Bannon, you basically want to ask your representatives to block other things Trump wants to get done until he fires Bannon. Make it clear to them that Bannon in the White House is an affront to American democracy and American ideals, and we need to give him the boot.
The Affordable Care Act: The Affordable Care Act is historic legislation that brought health insurance to huge swathes of Americans who were either previously unable to afford health insurance or unable to purchase health insurance due to pre-existing conditions (full disclosure: this includes me, personally, because I have migraines; my migraine medication cost also dropped from $76 a pill before I had insurance to $6 a pill with insurance. When I have a migraine and no medication I consistently end up being treated for uncontrolled vomiting in the ER.). It has helped keep people out of poverty and dramatically reduced racial disparities in coverage. The incoming administration wants to dismantle the law, starting with the individual mandate (which is absolutely critical to making the ACA economically viable for insurers); while they ostensibly say they want to replace it with ~something~, in the six years since it passed, they have come up with absolutely fuck all. Both houses of Congress have already passed the legislative first steps to dismantle the ACA--it’s starting! Call your representatives as soon as possible to let them know where you stand and how they can keep your vote the next time they’re up for re-election. You can find out how your representative in the House voted here--notably, nine Republicans crossed the aisle to vote with Democrats against the bill--and how your senators voted here--only Rand Paul crossed the aisle on that one.
A note on protesting amid breaking news: Because I’m drafting most of this a few days before it’ll go live, and because I can’t know when, precisely, you’ll actually make your individual calls, the exact nature of how you protest these appointments and laws may need to change a little bit based on how far the confirmation/legislative process has got by the time you’re calling. Also, I’m going to be copy-pasting a lot of this post to make next week’s post, which will cover a very similar set of tasks, just different people and different topics.
So. If the nominee you’re calling about is still undergoing confirmation hearings, then encourage your senators to rigorously question the nominee on issues critical to protecting the rights of your fellow humans. If the confirmation hearings for that nominee are finished, focus instead on encouraging your senators to vote against the nominee’s confirmation. If the confirmation has already gone through, either thank or criticize your senator’s vote, depending on which way they voted; and in any case make it clear to them that you continue to watch their voting behavior to see whether or not they will have your vote in 2018 (or 2020, or 2022--it’s worth also taking a second to check when your particular senators will next come up for re-election, if you don’t know off-hand, because of the Senate’s weird six-year terms. Senators up for re-election in 2018 are listed here. Senators up for re-election in 2020 are listed here. Senators up for re-election in 2022 are listed here.).
Similarly, when you’re calling about legislative priorities, depending on what has happened around that legislative issue since this post went live, you will either be urging your representatives to vote a particular way; or be thanking or criticizing their vote, depending on which way they voted, and making it clear to them that you continue to watch their voting behavior to see whether or not they will have your vote in 2018 (or 2020, or 2022).
Also, when you call your congressperson in the House about Cabinet appointments, since the House doesn’t vote on Cabinet appointments, just encourage your House representative to go on-record as opposing the nomination. The goal here is to make a lot of noise, and also to try and muster the political left to come together and resist the incoming administration with full-throated determination and conviction.
Anyway, to handle how fast this is moving, I recommend that you plan on searching a reputable news source, like The Guardian, shortly before you make your calls, for any breaking-news updates on the confirmation process that may require you to tweak your scripts.
How to Write Your Scripts (excerpted from 5M4F-5):
The basic phone script for calling your representatives goes something like so:
Hi, {can I ask who I’m speaking to? <, if they don’t say when they pick up>} [Jot their name down.] Hi, <their name>. My name is <your name> and I’m one of <your representative’s name>’s constituents in <where you live>. I wanted to let <your representative’s name> know that I strongly <support | oppose> <the thing you’re calling about>, because <succinct explanation of reason why you’re calling>. Is <your representative’s name> planning to <do the thing you want>?
Then you have to plan for a few different responses:
They’re with you: Thank you. Could you please let <appropriate pronoun> know that <expression of gratitude> and <indication that you will continue to watch your representative’s behavior and hold them accountable>?
They’re neutral: This subject is very important to me because <longer, more in-depth and emotive reason why you’re calling>. I would very much appreciate it if you could let <your representative’s name> know that I feel very strongly about this and would really encourage <appropriate pronoun> to <do the thing you want>. Is there any way I could follow up with you or <appropriate pronoun> later?
They oppose you: This subject is very important to me because <longer, more in-depth and emotive reason why you’re calling>. Can I ask why <your representative’s name> is <not doing the thing you want>? [Let them give you a reason, and write it down.] Okay, thank you. I understand <appropriate pronoun> concerns, but as one of <your representative’s name>’s voting constituents, I would really appreciate it if <appropriate pronoun> revisited <appropriate pronoun> decision because <alternate succinct explanation of reason why you’re calling>. Is there any way I could follow up with you or <appropriate pronoun> later?
<expression of gratitude>! <polite send-off>!
I want to point out that you probably don’t actually really need to plan for all of these responses. You can probably make a pretty good guess where your representative stands based on their party affiliation. However, especially if your representatives are moderates and often vote across the aisle, it’s not a bad idea to spend a little time planning for all three cases, because then your behind is covered, and you can recycle this language over and over on later calls, to different representatives. And yes: we will be calling other representatives.
This is the sample script that I wrote back in November, on a different issue and to Barbara Boxer, who has been replaced by Kamala Harris, but it gives you an idea how the Mad-Libs-filling process works:
Hi, {can I ask who I’m speaking to? <, if they don’t say when they pick up>} [Jot their name down.] Hi, <their name>. My name is <Ginny Washington>, and I’m one of <Senator Boxer>’s constituents in <West Hollywood>. I wanted to let <Senator Boxer> know that I strongly <support> <her resolution to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College>, because <I think every American’s vote should count equally>. {I just wanted to thank her for all her hard work on behalf of the principles of equal representation and equal protection under the law.}
<Thank you so much for your time>! <Have a nice day>!
If you can’t make calls: I recommended before that if you can’t make calls, you copy down snail mail addresses so you can send snail mail letters, and that you grab an email address or online contact link no matter what. Calls are the most effective, if you can make them, but please, do send snail mail letters if you can’t, or an email if you also can’t swing a stamp or get to a post office. You can use the script above as a template for your letter, but you’re probably going to want to default to assuming that your representative opposes you, and you’ll have to of course make it sound like a letter and not a phone convo.
If you care about correct forms of address: weirdly, because these things are super arcane, technically the correct way to address your senator or representative is still “The Honorable <whoever>”, as in, “The Honorable Barbara Boxer.” That goes on the envelope. You can then write “Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms. <whoever>” as your salutation.
