“Thank you for your thoughts on this matter, I didn’t read them. Here is a boilerplate statement espousing all the great things about this bill that you specifically criticized in your message to me. Please don’t reach out again.”
“Email your senator” is just about the most pointless waste of time aside from watching paint dry. Every time I’ve done it, I get a canned response that clearly shows nobody read it, just a robot that scans for keywords and generates a response based on that. “Let me tell you why all the things you are upset about are actually good things, and remember to vote for me!”
I wonder if they do statistics on the emails that come in to get a general idea of the group sentiment.
This is exactly what they do. Interns look at them (or some text comparison output) and take a general temperature.
It usually doesn’t matter what you say (aside from for/against) because your opinion is going to turn into a tally mark on one side or the other. (To get any sort of real audience takes money.)
And then the tallies get ignored, unless an issue is going absolutely viral and the politician is on the wrong side of it.
I honestly think it depends on the Senator.
I’ve had a really good response from Senator Warnock who ended up sending a representative out to inspect housing filled with black mold and mildew on the military base I work on.
Not sure what actually came of it, but Warnock did do something at least.
Reps and Senators have specific people dedicated to military and veteran assistance.
I figured it was because it was military that they actually did anything at all. I would just hope they’d take every citizen’s concerns into consideration.
To be fair, the same shit happens when you call them. Some intern answers and you don’t even get the platitudes. You might just be a tally mark on a list if they feel like it.
I like emailing my senator/CP because it does create a paper trail. One day maybe I’ll run against them and read all the emails I sent them, in public.
Enough phone calls will make a dent, though. I worked on Capitol Hill and every office is just a handful of young staffers manning the phones. So when we pissed people off, we really felt it. Those days were the worst. Couldn’t do anything except answer the next ringing phone. You can definitely motivate action that way, but it takes a decent little group of people to be willing to make the calls.
An intern read it, after which they found the form letter written by the staffer who handles those issues and used that to reply to you. The communication will never reach the staffer, let alone the congressperson. If you’re lucky, the office won’t have an intern and the administrative assistant will be the one to do the above.
Yes, Douglas, vote for me.
Yep
I wouldn’t call it entirely pointless. I’d describe it as one of the easiest ways to be involved with politics, along with voting. It’s very low commitment, and a low level of escalation/results. I highly recommend doing some training on union organizing, even if you aren’t interested in organizing a union. The tradeoff between commitment and escalation is very important when determining what actions to take in all forms of organizing, including political organizing
It certainly feels entirely pointless, even more pointless than voting. It’s not really being involved with politics because it doesn’t really change anything. It’s like writing letters to Santa Claus, except Santa is polite enough not to write back “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me.”
If you really care about climate change, you should firebomb a coal power plant or take a claw hammer to a private jet. That will be far more effective and fun than writing a senator who could not give two shits what you think.
Believe it or not, there’s room for both. If a meeting with a senator doesn’t produce results, is it really being involved with politics, based on your criteria?
We need to do the easy stuff, and we need to do fun stuff. If you’re unwilling to write an email, then that just means you’re unwilling to do one of the easiest methods of political engagement.
At least if you meet with a senator you can be sure they heard you and you can flip them off in person. Emails always feel like screaming into the void and expecting it to care.
Trust me, hearing isn’t the same as understanding. Senators, executives, billionaires, etc are all the same. They’re used to their power and they are unwilling to actually understand people like us. Organizing direct action will always be more effective than voting or writing emails. I know from lived experience that direct action is best. But civic engagement also involves the easy stuff, so it shouldn’t be written off as pointless
Ok I firebombed a power plant but now the warden says I’m not allowed to call my senator (or anyone else) and two thirds of the public associates climate activism with terrorism, what next?
Break out. Do it again.
Also depends on state vs federal government. It’s a lot easier to start making a change in your local government.
You’d think so. I used to.
I didn’t say it was easy, but it’s definitely not as hard as the federal government. For example, there are several offices in my county that have only one candidate (and occasionally none!).
I watched my dad get elected to local office with all kinds of ideas about how to improve things. In the end he managed to make sure the ugly apartment buildings a developer built weren’t as ugly as they had planned, but even that took a bunch of meetings and a huge amount of time.
So getting elected to local office is absolutely easier than getting elected to state and federal, but making change in a local government is still fighting a huge amount of inertia.
Every response I get from any of my representatives.
“Thank you for reaching out, here are all the things I’m paid by my real bosses to say about this issue, please shut up now and leave me alone so I can blow my financiers”
“Also, I have shared your email address and phone number with everyone I know, so enjoy the spam asking for donations to politicians who whole-heartedly support the issues you just told me you disagree with!”
“Please enjoy my quarterly newsletter that hopes to gaslight you about how the policies that actively hurt you are actually in your best interest!”
Everyone insists that writing your representatives works, but neglect to tell you that there’s a million other things that keep them from getting things done.
My dad is a member of the local town council. I ask him about maybe making safe sidewalks so his grandkids can visit without needing to drive, he just shrugs and says it will take years to do. His experience in government has really recalibrated what I think government is capable of.
If a local government can’t get a hundred yards of sidewalk paved when one of the leaders is pushing for it, how long would it take the federal government to build high speed rail?
Over a decade. It’s a massive infrastructure project. I’m not demanding to ride high speed rail in 2025, I’m demanding it to have started by then knowing full and well that the design portion will take several years for a rush job. Bridges aren’t quick either, nor are dams. But governments build them because they have to start sometime.
We needed to start this process 20 years ago. We desperately need to start now. At no point will we stop needing to start asap, it just will get more and more dire that we do.
Any project that takes longer than an election cycle is doomed
Then so too are we
If a local government can’t get a hundred yards of sidewalk paved when one of the leaders is pushing for it, how long would it take the federal government to build high speed rail?
Honolulu started planning theirs in the 1960’s, finally got funding in 2005, started construction in 2011 (planned to finish in 2020), went over budget, changed plans to shorted the route, and finally opened the first stations a couple months ago. Their current estimate is that it wont be done until 2031. So to answer your question, it can take at least 26 years once you get funding.
https://www.hawaiibusiness.com/hart-history-hawaii-rail-project-when-finished-budget/
I’ll share a different story then. Over the past several years, I’ve participated in a movement to get bus rapid transit lanes which is moving forward. I started as a citizen advocate, then represented the bus company (as an advocate) through several phases of studies, then led a community engagement team in which I personally talked to over a thousand local residents and gave more than a dozen presentations to the community and stakeholders. I’ve sparred with NIMBYs and congresspersons alike. And now the project is moving forward and will dedicate over a third of a major roadway exclusively to bus service.
Cynicism is crack for slacktivists and keyboard warriors.
Exactly my point. It took one person working that hard for free for months or maybe years to get that done, dragging the government kicking and screaming into a good idea.
That wouldn’t be necessary if our government wasn’t broken.
That’s part of the issue though…why are you thinking it’s 100 yards of paving? They can’t do it just in front of his house.
This may be why the older generation have more sway. Call them, talk to a person or get a call back. You can’t boiler plate that.
This is not why the older generation has more sway. Calling just means talking to an intern who will read you the boilerplate, and then mark down a for/against tally if you’re lucky. Most of them don’t even care about that since they’re ideological motivated rather than caring what constituents think.
No. It’s because they reliably vote.
Unfortunately, calling isn’t necessarily great either:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=v7CFo0XKLmo&si=4oKkWKpx0ainc09T
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xM9otKIeEY4&si=Hl4hcVxZ66qcJkmY
The best thing you can say about Bob Casey is that he’s not Pat Toomey. And I’ll probably vote for him again.
Which is why writing him letters won’t help. It’s not like we have an alternative we can vote for, and if we primary him then we’re evil leftists who want
TrumpToomey to win by nominating an unelectable candidate.It was wonderful voting for Fetterman over Connor Lamb. Maybe we can get another progressive primary challenger. Pennsylvania is getting more blue every day.
At least you got a reply. Mine were ignored the few times I tried.
Write letters (those things you write with a pen and paper)
maybe you’ll get a handwritten letter telling you to fuck off instead of an email saying the same thing?
No, you’ll get one that’s printed out and signed by a machine
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