If you’d like to do something about whatever your representatives in Austin are doing and/or not doing, one of the things you can do is call to tell them what you’re thinking. It’s not that hard, especially if you have a script to tell you what to say on the issue you care about. But first you have to find those scripts!
A few things about calling your reps (state or federal): only call your reps, because they only care about people who can vote them out of office. Sometimes you’ll see requests to call chairs of committees, but unless they work for you as a constituent, that’s not going to help. With a lot of scripts, you’ll see “I’m a constituent at [address/zip code]” which is to tell them you can vote against them.
If you haven’t done it before, you don’t have to worry about what to say to the staffers beyond the script. They just want to report to their boss what the constituents are calling about and how many are for or against their boss’ position. Very rarely will you get a staffer pushing back; I’ve been calling for years and only once has it ever happened to me. If they do that, remind them they work for you or just hang up and call back later.
Federal level scripts:
- 5 Calls, which has a web page, an app, and an email newsletter, is a great resource for scripts by issue. They’ll find the numbers for your congressperson and senators with your address and walk you through the process. It’s very easy even if you’ve never done it before.
- Indivisible, the activist group, has a good resource list that includes call scripts for a bunch of issues at the federal level. They have a newsletter and they’ll send you to-dos every week.
- Resistbot is a chat bot you can use with your message app on your phone to generate faxes, postal mail, or emails to your representatives. They also have a function to check your voter registration. Resistbot used to be free (the voter registration still is) but now requires donations to keep going because it gets so much use. They also have an app, but I haven’t used it.
- Home With the Armadillo, the blog of journalist and activist Andrea Grimes, has started a series of Red State scripts. Useful for those of us who live in places like Texas (she’s in Austin).
State level scripts in Texas:
- Howdy Politics has both Texas and federal call scripts. I know Substack is problematic (to say the least) but this is where the information is in this case.
- The League of Women Voters has letters/emails to send to your representative which you can also use for call scripts.
- I also see state scripts in Reddit’s Texas Politics subreddit. Reddit, like Substack, has its problems but if you’re just skimming and not getting into fights in the comments, even the Texas politics subreddit can be usable.
A lot of these folks are going to want your money (Indivisible, LWV, and of course Substack is constantly pushing readers to upgrade their pledge). The only one that’s pay to play at the time of writing is Resistbot, which is understandable since they function on text messages.
There are plenty of other ways to get into activism at the federal and state levels. This is just a starting point and a post I hope to revisit and update as I find more resources.