Make an impact in 5 minutes or less

November 3, 2023 3:43 PM

A really brief instruction manual, kept up to date with phone numbers and quick scripts. Let your US politicians know you care. Click here to get started. Ready to start making calls? Find an issue
posted by aniola (15 comments total)

Sometimes a recipe says something is going to take 5 minutes and it takes half an hour. Sometimes a web form says you can fill it out in 5 minutes and it takes an hour. This really is a 1-5 minute project per issue if you stick to the boilerplate and don't spend days agonizing over every last word.

Which you don't have to! Because the people at the other end of the call (or voicemail if you call outside business hours) are just going to take a tally of your opinion and probably not going to be carefully analyzing every word you say in great detail as it turns out.
posted by aniola at 3:47 PM on November 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

it's also fun to get drunk and just wing it

if you've never left a sweary message on a US Senator's voicemail at 3am then you're not Americaning hard enough
posted by Jacqueline at 5:13 PM on November 3, 2023 [12 favorites]

Unless you’re spending that five minutes writing a check to someone’s campaign fund, you’re just making busywork for some lowly staffer.
posted by dr_dank at 5:35 PM on November 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Unless you’re spending that five minutes writing a check to someone’s campaign fund, you’re just making busywork for some lowly staffer.

That's not busywork -- that's what they're paid to do. Politicians expect to hear from their constituents about the issues of the day, and they have staff members whose job it is to record the opinions that come in.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:17 PM on November 3, 2023 [11 favorites]

I live in Texas. This is pointless here.
posted by tafetta, darling! at 7:41 PM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Even in Texas, I think calling can help shift the Overton Window

The term is named after American policy analyst Joseph Overton, who stated that an idea's political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range, rather than on politicians' individual preferences.[2][3] According to Overton, the window frames the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that time.

posted by aniola at 8:33 PM on November 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm in Texas too. It's pointless for a person to do this.

It's not pointless for tens of thousands of people to do it.

These are small actions, but they have an effect nonetheless. After all, why did you bother writing an internet comment trying to convince people to not to do it, unless you believe it could influence someone?
posted by AlSweigart at 9:28 AM on November 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Not pointless. The few times I've seen elected officials vote against party lines, they've cited their constituents as the reason.

So at least some of them are taking the tallies of calls, emails, etc. for and against seriously enough to defy their party whips.

I can't remember the exact multipliers but IIRC most apply different weights to different contact methods and calls do count more than emails.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:59 AM on November 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

As a Texan, I think it's pointless to call my two senators, but not pointless along all other levels of government. I have been doing a lot of phonebanks for Palestine this month, and we've heard feedback from staffers and elected officials that the calls really do make a difference in helping shift the conversation in DC. This goes for cases where people are calling those who already agree with them. It gives politicians the numbers to show that it's worth staying firm.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:37 AM on November 4, 2023

(While I think it's politically pointless for me to call Ted Cruz, it is FUN.)
posted by tofu_crouton at 11:16 AM on November 4, 2023

Also a Texan. I know Ted Cruz and John Cornyn's staffers don't listen to me but it was when I was in Lance Gooden's district that I had the worst experience with calling. (Gooden is in deep east Texas and my east Dallas neighborhood was zoned to his CD; after redistricting we belong to Beth van Duyne in Arlington). Gooden's staffer actually lectured me on why his boss was right and I was wrong. I now am prepared for that; it helps that I've reached the age where I can legit go "YOUNG MAN" to that kind of bullshit and activate the core terror of ancient grannies that young Texans of a certain kind of raising have.

But what I wanted to say about the Overton window stuff is that Gooden was a master of avoiding it. He wouldn't hold town halls too close to Dallas, and when Dallas Dems went down to the nearest town halls in little towns in east Texas, they would be refused admittance or people (including Gooden and his staffers IIRC) would whip up the crowd against them. I don't remember my local Dems actually being attacked from their accounts, but this is the kind of run-up to violence that we had before J6 and in these little towns, likely as not the cops will just send the local boys home and tell the Dallas troublemakers to get out of town.

I think calling and showing up are good and necessary things, but I think about those fellow Dallasites who could have got their heads busted in by showing up to Gooden's town halls a lot these days. That's moving the Overton window by terrifying people out of participation and it's becoming more of a norm (or re-becoming more of a norm; I know extrajudicial political violence against marginalized groups was a norm for much of the 20th century). I really don't like it.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 11:48 AM on November 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Making busywork for some lowly staffer in Bill Hagerty or Marsha Blackburn's offices (my options) is great because it's time they won't be spending helping do evil.

I actually have been the lowly staffer in this scenario, though it was in Canada and a provincial office, and we really didn't care about wording, we just tallied how many were pro and how many con.
posted by joannemerriam at 1:59 PM on November 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

My senators aren't Cruz and Cornyn, but they might as well be.

I write to them with classical-conservative arguments for why they shouldn't support culture-war/MAGA-type things. These arguments generally boil down to some combination of 'it's unconstitutional,' 'people should be free to make their own decisions about x,' and 'it's bad for business.'

My success rate is, frankly, terrible, but it's not quite zero.
posted by box at 3:22 PM on November 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

(Not that I think it's my specific correspondence that's making the difference--as others have said, sometimes politicians look at the pro/con count.)
posted by box at 3:31 PM on November 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

I live in Texas. This is pointless here.

*laughs in DC resident*
posted by kat518 at 5:22 AM on November 5, 2023 [1 favorite]