They Represent Us and They Work For Us
Comprehensive 2020 Directory of Government Officials
(Contact list courtesy of the League of Women Voters)
Indivisible Guide
A few days after the election of Donald Trump, two former congressional staffers talked about what every progressive in America was talking about: what do we do now? We saw energy building to resist, but it wasn’t directed.
Sign a petition? Call Congress? How does this actually translate into taking down Donald Trump’s agenda?
It hit us. We’d seen a model for success for how local activism can affect real change in Congress. If the Tea Party was able to take on a historically popular President Obama with a Democratic super-majority to slow and sometimes defeat his federal agenda, we can surely take on Donald Trump and the members of Congress who would do his bidding.
So we wrote a Google Doc and put it online December 14. The roadmap we laid out wasn’t rocket science:
- Tea Party-inspired strategy: locally focused, defensive congressional advocacy to protect our values (without the vitriol).
- How your member of Congress thinks: reelection, reelection, reelection — and how to use that to save democracy.
- Identify or organize your local group: building constituent power through organically-formed, locally-led groups.
- Local advocacy tactics that actually work: focusing on your three members of Congress through town halls, other public events, district office visits, and mass calls.