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Here is great post from reddit by SomeKindOfMutant: "Right idea; wrong methods. Let me explain.
An email to your legislators may result in a form letter response and a phone call to the office may amount to a tally mark on an administrative assistant's notepad.
But, if you want to get their attention, a letter to the editor published in one of your state's 5-10 biggest newspapers that mentions them specifically BY NAME is the way to go. That is the crucial thing to know--the rest of this comment is an explanation of why I know this is true.
I know this because, when I interned in the D.C. office of a senator one summer, one of the duties I shared was preparing a document that was distributed internally both online and in paper format. This document was made every day and comprised world news articles, national news, state news, and any letters to the editor in the 5-10 largest newspapers within the senator's home state that mentioned him by name. I was often the person who put that document on his desk, and it was the first thing he read every morning after arriving to the office. I began to suspect that this was standard operating procedure because several other senators' offices share the same printer in the basement of the Russell Senate Office building, and I saw other interns doing the exact same procedures that I was involved in.
Since the internship, I've conferred with other Senate and House employees past and present and determined that most--if not all--offices use essentially the same procedure. Edit:
I don't mean to suggest that calling or emailing your legislators is worthless. It isn't--it's just not the most effective route to getting their attention. However, if you don't have the time to writer a letter to the editor, please consider at least calling or emailing them. In fact, there's no reason why you couldn't use multiple tactics by calling them, emailing them, and writing a letter to the editor.
If you would like to go the call or email route, tools to help with that can be found at https://thedaywefightback.org/" |