We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
—Abraham Lincoln
Call your member of Congress and tell them what to do.
Lets your local politician, who works for you, know what you want them to do and that you will be keeping an eye on them and voting accordingly.
Republicans’ multiple attempts to repeal Obamacare have failed spectacularly (at least three times) because people resisted, they got involved, they got organized, they made phone calls and pressured Congress not to pass legislation that would have stripped millions of Americans of health care. This is a major victory for the Resistance, one that demonstrates the power we have when we fight back. Members of the Resistance—were relentless in applying the necessary pressure to stop Trump dead in his tracks on one of his central campaign promises. People organized and made hundreds of thousands of phone calls to senators and fellow constituents in key states to kill so-called Trumpcare, it didn’t just fail because of GOP incompetence (although that certainly helped). The lesson here is that when we organize and apply tenacious pressure we are the ones who call the shots. (On the heels of their defeat, they’ve been searching for and finding other ways to undermine Obamacare by reducing funding, so stay on guard.)
Every senator cares a heck of a lot more about their own reelection than Trump’s. The most direct way to push against Trump’s agenda is to put pressure on your local and state representatives. One easy way to do that is to call them up and let them know exactly how you feel about the job they are doing. Sometimes it’s easy to think—someone else can do this, so I don’t have to. Don’t make that mistake—take advantage of the simple but powerful action of making that phone call.
If you haven’t already, you might consider saving this number to your phone: 202-224-3121. That’s the number for the United States Capitol Hill switchboard, and from there you can reach the office of every single senator and congressperson. Give them an earful! That number will literally get hold of all of them, but you can also reach out locally by contacting your local district office. As with all forms of resistance, keep in mind this is a marathon not a sprint. Phone calls are important but don’t tire yourself out, seek a balance with this activity and using all the tools of resistance at your disposal.
You don’t have to limit yourself to phone calls with this action. You can find out if your representative has a local office and pay them a visit. Find out when the next town hall meeting is. Think of it like you would going to a parent-teacher meeting, or a neighborhood safety meeting. Governors, senators, mayors, and other elected officials have offices and contact information that are set up to hear what you have to say.
A friend of mine used to work as an intern in the office of a senator. One of his main jobs was to answer the phone for the senator’s office and keep a tally of what people called in about. The senator would get that information every day, and you better believe he paid close attention to it. Why? Because the senator wanted to get reelected, and he knew that the people calling in and praising him for voting the way they wanted, or chewing him out when he voted against their wishes, were the same people that decided if he got to keep his job.
The Tea Party did a great job of using this to their advantage. They were merciless to their representatives. They made demands, they showed up at town halls, they got the attention of their public officials, and they shifted the national political dialogue in the direction they wanted. By stealing a page from the Tea Party, we can make sure that our representatives hear us loud and clear. The Tea Party had outside help, hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of help, from the Koch family. But the tactics work with or without that level of funding. In fact the battle at hand is to a large degree going to be a fight between Big Money and Big Hearts. Who do you want to win that fight?
It’s certainly not like the Tea Party invented the playbook on how to pressure politicians! Putting pressure on politicians is what the progressive movement was built upon. We have many tools at our disposal, from strikes and protests to boycotts and marches, but if we are going to do all of that, why skip the easiest and most obvious?
I encourage you to check out a great guide on how to most effectively put pressure on your member of Congress. It is free online and came out soon after Trump’s election, it’s the Indivisible Guide—Indivisible was a major force in shutting down the attempts to repeal health care. You can find it at indivisbleguide.com. It’s a PDF that’s twenty-six pages long and breaks down how and why putting pressure on local politicians works. I sincerely encourage you to check it out (it was written by a bunch of wonky political folks, so they know the skinny on how to pressure politicians), but here is a quick summary as well.
The main ideas:
Organize locally, and pressure local politicians for best results.
Your MOC (member of Congress) has a number-one priority, getting reelected. Use this to make them listen and act.
Get their attention by going to town halls, public events, visiting their district office and asking for a meeting, and making calls in coordination with local groups.
Make your voice heard. It would be silly for us to complain about how much Trump sucks and yet not use our voices to speak out in the simplest and most effective way available to us.