So many issues, all so urgent, all so important! Where shall we start? Our friends at The New York Times’ Year of Living Better have a suggestion. Begin by exploring how you can participate in politics.
The most obvious way to act “politically” is to vote. America just concluded a fierce and extremely important election cycle in January 2021. It ran long for many reasons. For one, Georgia needed to complete its critical run-off election for two Senate seats. For another, some Republican legislators supported false claims about voting irregularities, which led the nation to the brink of insurrection. There’s plenty to say about who gets to vote in America. And about how easy — or difficult — each state makes both registering to vote and voting itself. Future posts here will tackle some of them.
Now, with the president safely sworn in, we can catch our collective breath. (So can those doubtful Republicans who won their seats on the very same ballots.) January is as good a time as any to think about how to engage with political issues and make your views about them heard.
First, scan your interests
Is that stating the obvious? To suggest that the first step towards engaging with political issues is to know your own mind? Possibly not. If you haven’t reflected on what truly matters to you, your efforts to engage with governing risk being scattershot or fruitless.
Consider those political opinion polls, like this one from August 2020 by Pew Research. They offer a dozen topics to choose from. All of them interest me (at least a little)! The economy, foreign relations with friendly and hostile nations, health care and Social Security funding, protecting women’s health choices and eradicating systemic racism from our justice system… I might click or check all the choices. But the canny pollster may ask me to rank them. Or select just three issues that matter the most to me. If I haven’t given some thought to which those are, the question might flummox me and I’ll abandon the poll.
Politicians sometimes try to paint the other party’s voters with broad, flat brushstrokes. “Big-city folks don’t care about farming concerns.” “Small-town folks disdain higher education.” Don’t let them get away with it!
Consider how nuanced your close friends and family members are when it comes to their interests and beliefs. Look at my own little family: Tim, my mother and I, a gaggle of lifelong Democrats, yet each with our own passions. Timothy regularly gave money and time to fair housing and disability activists. Mom’s abiding concerns involved environmental issues and animal welfare. I love cats large and small, but my political energy’s engaged by voter suppression in all its guises.
Ask yourself ‘why,’ and maybe ‘how’
Beyond understanding why the issue matters to me, I ponder what changes in policy would solve the problem to my satisfaction. Perhaps too many of us shrug, reckoning the problem’s just too complicated for an ordinary person to deal with. Some politicians, in my opinion, bank on constituents doing the “big shrug” and abandoning the effort. Daunted voters won’t bother to engage them on certain topics once election day is safely behind them.
So, passion may first engage you in a topic, but I recommend balancing it with some methodical thinking. For example, women’s health care is keenly important to me because I’m female. But I’ve also thought through how my positions on government health policy might affect my community or the nation. As an exercise, you might want to try explaining one of your topic areas to yourself or to a friend. Articulate why the issue matters to you and your community. Then ponder how a policy around the topic might become action, and in turn become law.
Let’s say you’re interested in “climate change,” a far-reaching, immensely complicated topic. How do you fix that, right? How do you make the issue relevant to your neighbors, especially if national news stories cover places hundreds of miles away? For example, if you live in Kentucky or Tennessee, it’s hard to worry about coastal flooding and worsening hurricanes. But what if changes in winter temperatures or spring rainfall threatens something in your local environment? Inland communities where key industries include agriculture or timber forestry can be stirred to action by encroaching pests previously killed off by long, cold winters.
Then scan the landscape
You may have decided you are passionate about expanding access to free child-care, closing puppy mills, and ensuring everyone eligible to vote can do so easily, more or less in that order. Your next step is to learn more about the current state of play on each issue.
- Is the topic currently hot in the news locally or nationally, or is it a long-simmering issue? In 2020, many matters of long-standing racial injustice came to the forefront of news coverage and policy discussions. To take just one example, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, many people in Georgia opted to vote early. Perhaps they wanted to ensure they could cast their ballot while they were healthy, or to avoid crowds on Election Day. News stories about the pressure on early voting spotlighted the state’s program of closing polling places instead of adding more… particularly in predominantly Black, and Democratic-leaning districts.
- Is your concern rare, or is it fairly easy to find other people who share your concerns? I’m not a fan of Facebook, and given its flawed algorithms, I would encourage you to look elsewhere online to find like-minded folks. A reasonably carefully worded open search is likely to find relevant groups, often with a national platform. You might also explore the “Find Movements” tab in MeetUp.com, which will help you find groups closer to home.
- Finally, is anyone in government interested, too? Have legislators in your district spoken about the issue during their most recent campaign, or do you suspect it isn’t even on a policy aide’s radar? State legislative websites (these examples are all in Washington) list current sitting representatives and senators, with maps of legislative districts to help you find your representative. Those lists usually have links to the elected officials’ official websites, and there you can find their interests, positions and bills they have sponsored in the past or are working on today. You can also find legislators outside your district who share your policy interests by exploring committee lists.
Let’s say you find out that the puppy mill issue is on the ASPCA’s 2021 watchlist. You might volunteer to help on a campaign in your state by writing letters to news editors. Your family could foster a pup rescued from a local mill-breeder. And of course, you could call your statehouse representatives to urge them to take action. Which leads naturally enough to the next step.
Let your legislators know what you think
Despite Louis B. Mayer’s remark that “you wanna send a message, call Western Union,” speaking to someone directly remains the best way to get their attention. That’s as true for legislators as it is for your teenager. Political strategists confirm the impact of a telephone call outweighs the time needed to prepare for and place the call.
Prepare? Absolutely, unless you are so deeply immersed in the topic that you can speak about it authoritatively it off-the-cuff. At the least, you’ll need a 3×5 card noting why is the issue is important to you and your community, small or large, and what you want the legislator to do.
The Union of Concerned Scientists has a very helpful webpage about how to have a productive call with a legislator. The advice may have been posted in 2008, but it is still relevant. This webpage on Indivisible.org offers advice about when your call has the greatest effect. If you worry you’ll lose track of your message in half-way through the call, use Indivisible’s script template.
You might do such a good job on your own speaking notes, the like-minded friends you’ve made in the previous steps will be begging to borrow them.