{"id":1148,"date":"2017-01-26T12:06:13","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T17:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=1148"},"modified":"2017-01-26T12:06:13","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T17:06:13","slug":"calling-your-reps-a-guide-for-the-timid-with-quick-start-and-power-user-options","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2017\/01\/calling-your-reps-a-guide-for-the-timid-with-quick-start-and-power-user-options\/","title":{"rendered":"Calling Your Reps: A Guide for the Timid (with “Quick Start” and “Power User” options!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am a for-real, diagnosed agoraphobe. \u00a0You may be “terrified” of calling \"usa-american-flag-waving-animated-gif-26\"folks on the phone, but I am\u00a0legit terrified<\/strong> of calling strangers on the phone. <\/em>\u00a0Like, panic attack terrified, sick-to-my stomach terrified, go to the doctor terrified, diagnosed with good ole “DSM-IV-TR 300.21: Panic Disorder With Agoraphobia” terrified.<\/p>\n

If I can do this, you can do this.<\/p>\n

Quick Start<\/h1>\n

This is so easy it should be a hoax:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Goto the 5 Calls<\/a>\u00a0website.<\/li>\n
  2. If it doesn’t auto-detect your location, then click “Change” in the big white “5 Calls” box on the top left and enter your zip code.<\/li>\n
  3. Pick an issue from the menu that pops up and start calling. \u00a0They explain the issue, give you a script to use, and provide the phone number. \u00a0If you’re on your smartphone, then you can just tap the number to start the call.<\/li>\n
  4. Repeat until you’ve made five calls; it’ll take you less than five minutes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This is a great place to start:\u00a0The folks at 5 Calls<\/em> are highlighting important issues and their scripts look solid. \u00a0I really like that it goes beyond just calling Congress (for example, the first time I used the site it had me call the U.S. Army Core of Engineers about the Dakota Access pipeline; slick!)<\/p>\n

    But there are<\/em> a couple things that I don’t like about this service:\u00a0 1)\u00a0it only gives your congressfolks’ D.C. phone numbers; 2) I don’t\u00a0particularly like reading someone else’s script, because I worry that too many cookie-cutter calls lose impact; 3) I’m gonna level with you: I’ve started crying on these calls before, suddenly realizing how upset I am about these issues. \u00a0I don’t really like crying, I definitely don’t like crying on the phone with strangers, but I’ve got to believe that a grown man crying about Special Education and his kid’s school\u2014that probably does indeed get relayed to your rep, and gets folks in that office fired up about the issue.<\/p>\n

    So, that brings us to …<\/p>\n

    Power User Mode<\/h1>\n
      \n
    1. Add your congressfolks’ numbers to your phone’s contact list.<\/strong>\u00a0 Find out who your reps are and get both their D.C. numbers and<\/strong><\/em> their in-state numbers (most offices are easier to reach on one or the other; with my congressfolk I can always get through on their Michigan numbers, but rarely on the D.C. numbers).\u00a0If you have no clue who your reps are,\u00a0look it up<\/a>\u00a0by address or text your zip code to (520) 200-2223<\/i>\u00a0and a robot will send you their numbers instantly<\/strong> (sadly, that service\u00a0is mostly limited to D.C. contact info\u2014but it’s so damn convenient, I can’t help but keep plugging it).<\/li>\n
    2. Create a daily reminder in your calendar to call your reps<\/strong>. \u00a0Drive time is great for this, as is that dead zone just before or after lunch, or any time you know you’ll be sitting around waiting for your kid’s school bus or whatever.<\/li>\n
    3. Take a glance at the front page of a reliable newspaper each day<\/strong>. \u00a0I like the New York Times<\/em> and Washington Post<\/em>. \u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/em> is fine for this, as are the Detroit News<\/em> and Free Press<\/em> (I’m a Michigander) or ugly-ass\u00a0AP Wire<\/em> homepage<\/a>\u2014even frikkin\u00a0USA Today<\/em>. \u00a0I’ve drawn away from Slate <\/em>(their tone was too confident\u00a0before the election, and is too panic-inducing now),\u00a0but still think they get their facts right enough for these purposes. \u00a0The little NPR<\/em> news-breaks are fine, too. \u00a0Avoid the op-ed pages of any of these papers, as well as polemical sites (e.g.,\u00a0HuffPo<\/em>, Politico, <\/em>etc.), Google News (which has proven too easily manipulated), and social media (where I’ve found\u2014at least in my feed\u2014items are frequently so compressed for character count and spun for impact that they come dangerously close to departing from fact). \u00a0The point here is that you want a pretty plain-vanilla factual account of what’s happened in the past day.<\/li>\n
    4. Decide which thing on the front page bugs you most. \u00a0<\/strong>Today, for me, it’s this: “Sometime this week, Trump is expected to pause the flow of all refugees to the U.S. and indefinitely bar those fleeing war-torn Syria.<\/a>\u00a0The president’s upcoming order is also expected to suspend issuing visas for people from several predominantly Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen<\/em>…<\/strong>” \u00a0This bugs me for several reasons, but I think the biggest is this: Five out of those seven Muslim countries are places that the U.S. bombed every 20 minutes, 24 hours per day, for all of 2016<\/a>. \u00a0To my mind, if you drop 20,000 bombs on some people who are minding their own business, you owe them something\u2014like maybe a non-bombed place to live.<\/li>\n
    5. Call your reps about it and tell them how you feel.<\/strong> \u00a0You don’t have to tell them what to do\u2014vote for this, against that, whatever\u2014you don’t have to suggest how to fix anything. \u00a0Figuring that part out is their job. \u00a0You just call, identify yourself and the city where you live, and say “The president said this…” or “I read in the paper that…” or “This rich person is arguing that we should do this other stuff…” and it scares the shit out of me. \u00a0Please help us.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      I am a for-real, diagnosed agoraphobe. \u00a0You may be “terrified” of calling folks on the phone, but I am\u00a0legit terrified of calling strangers on the phone. \u00a0Like, panic attack terrified, sick-to-my stomach terrified, go to the doctor terrified, diagnosed with good ole “DSM-IV-TR 300.21: Panic Disorder With Agoraphobia” terrified. If I can do this, you … Continue reading “Calling Your Reps: A Guide for the Timid (with “Quick Start” and “Power User” options!)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[75],"tags":[53],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1148"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1150,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions\/1150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}