Daily Yopp! 2.24.17 - How to Best Leverage Your Activist Hour

Yesterday, I was part of a group that met with three of Senator Dianne Feinstein's aides for about an hour and a half to discuss some of the key issues facing our nation at the time and ways that those of us on the ground can best use our time and resources to have an impact.

In response to one of my Yopps!, a friend of mind used the term "my activist hour" which I take to mean the time she sets aside each day to engage in calling, emailing, writing, or whatever that day's Whac-a-Mole politics brings up. I usually spend about 30 minutes every morning and another 30-90 minutes each night engaged in my own Activist Hour stuff. But how can each of us maximize the impact that our time will have?

Here are some ideas/insights I got from the meeting with Feinstein's staff.

For those of you with a supportive MoC:

1. Find out how their office prefers to tally constituent concerns and use that whenever possible. For example, both Senator Feinstein and Representative Barbara Lee (my representative in the House) prefer email. They both indicated that emails to their offices are ranked at the same level as phone calls or letters. Bear in mind that you won't get a response (or at least it will take awhile), but that doesn't mean your email is being ignored. They watch those tallies very carefully. 

2. If you have a personal story that is relevant to a particular issue facing Congress, write a letter and mail it or hand deliver it to the congressperson's office. In our meeting, we passed on a stack of about two hundred letters written by students from my school. The aides were very excited and referred to that pile multiple times. I suggest a hand written or printed letter over email because this gives your MoC something physical that they can use as a prop. 

3. If you have a problem with a federal agency that needs intervention, contact your MoCs for assistance. This not only might bring you the help you need, but will give them valuable data showing that our federal agencies aren't working. For example, perhaps you have major water/flood damage from the recent storms. Is FEMA there to help you out? 

4. When your MoC does something good, let people know via social media. Just like the negative impression we want to develop around the non-supportive MoCs, we also need to build up image of the other side.

For those of you whose MoC is not supportive:

1. Call their offices and babble on. Basically waste their staff's time listening to your nonsense.  

2. Demand that your MoC hold a town hall and hound them when they don't meet with the public. Attend public events if you are able. 

3. Follow them in the news (Google Alerts is a great tool for this) and complain about their mistakes on social media. 

4. Send them your personal stories as well, but make a copy and send it to friendly MoCs so they know what your representative is ignoring.

The above ideas are mostly my impressions/analysis of what I heard at the meeting. Feinstein's aides only recommended the first four ideas. They had no comments about how to deal with non-supportive MoCs. You might find that your MoC is more open to some of your progressive ideas than you assumed. In order to survive the next four years, we're going to need some of the Senators and Representatives to break party lines. If your MoC is someone like John McCain, you might consider appealing to his patriotism and sense of duty to the country.

Hope that gives you some ideas! Yours in solidarity!