4 ms·
You are right: bitching does nothing, yet writing our representatives is almost as bad. I interned for a certain senator a while back—all the letters that peopl
by aohtsab 17y ago
You are right: bitching does nothing, yet writing our representatives is almost as bad. I interned for a certain senator a while back—all the letters that people sent in were recorded as tallies in a system, and the responses were typed up by office staff. By the way: most of the letters which were sent in were spam—the same letter with different signatures.
- tumult 17y agoI don't actually see anything wrong with that. The problem is that they don't seem to do anything with the numbers they gather.
- aohtsab 17y agoVery true. From what I understood, the data was nothing more than something for the senator to chew on.
- danek 17y agoso there's no point in ever crafting a nice letter? good to know.
- dkokelley 17y agoI think calling might be considered more effective. It shows that you are willing to invest enough time and actually make your concerns heard. I think they might weight calls like TV networks. Your 1 call counts as 1,000 people who wouldn't care to call. Of course the most effective thing to do would be to befriend your congressman personally. On a larger scale, organizing a sort of free internet seal of approval for all representatives could be even more powerful. If representatives know that voters would be more likely to vote for candidates with the seal of approval, then they might be persuaded to earn that seal.
- JoeAltmaier 17y agoSpam? My signature is valuable, even if attached to a petition. Shame on you.
- ascuttlefish 17y agoSometimes others find the words better than I can, so I sign a generic form letter to my member of Parliament. It's not really spam. It's heartfelt. Edit: I just wanted to add that while generally I agree that writing letters has little to no effect, I think it's important for people to start DOING something. If it starts with writing letters, maybe the upshot will be that people are embolded to participate in bigger future actions, like taking part in demonstrations and more when the time comes. Cynicism and defeatism aren't the right starting attitudes for a fight. Just my two cents.