Phoenix
Member
After sitting down today and reviewing what our realistic options are for 'protesting' some of the behaviors of the government - considering our geographic diversity, the first thing that seems to make sense is that we develop a letter writing campaign to our various senators, representatives, governors, and respective political party contact persons.
There are some pro's and con's to this approach and I'll start with the cons. A letter writing campaign is only slightly more effective than an email campaign. We don't really have any way of knowing that the people we're trying to contact are actually receiving our letters or are responding to them. This will be discouraging to many because even if a politician DOES ready a letter, what you get back in response will amount to a preformatted form letter.
However, everything needs to be done in baby steps. I'm a firm advocate that if you start small and get something done first, you can eventually do much larger things. This for many people will be the first time that they've actually ever tried to mail anyone in government to state their displeasure with anything so this is probably the best starting point. Its 'low hanging' 'low effort' work for us to write some letters to politicians, and if we can't even get this part done - we're not going to get any further.
It is my belief that we should document this letter writing exercise and our experiences therein. Once we've done that I think we should take the next step which is a slight bit higher on the protest food chain: coordinated submissions to all of our local newspapers opinion/editorial sections. A well-written and clearly thought out op/ed piece is likely to be read by a large number of people and maybe even have them think about issues and perhaps even ask some questions. At this point it would be nice to direct people to a website where our 'position' is clearly described.
I wanted to start something that was clearly attainable and would require little effort such that people actually DO it.
Questions, comments, criticisms?
There are some pro's and con's to this approach and I'll start with the cons. A letter writing campaign is only slightly more effective than an email campaign. We don't really have any way of knowing that the people we're trying to contact are actually receiving our letters or are responding to them. This will be discouraging to many because even if a politician DOES ready a letter, what you get back in response will amount to a preformatted form letter.
However, everything needs to be done in baby steps. I'm a firm advocate that if you start small and get something done first, you can eventually do much larger things. This for many people will be the first time that they've actually ever tried to mail anyone in government to state their displeasure with anything so this is probably the best starting point. Its 'low hanging' 'low effort' work for us to write some letters to politicians, and if we can't even get this part done - we're not going to get any further.
It is my belief that we should document this letter writing exercise and our experiences therein. Once we've done that I think we should take the next step which is a slight bit higher on the protest food chain: coordinated submissions to all of our local newspapers opinion/editorial sections. A well-written and clearly thought out op/ed piece is likely to be read by a large number of people and maybe even have them think about issues and perhaps even ask some questions. At this point it would be nice to direct people to a website where our 'position' is clearly described.
I wanted to start something that was clearly attainable and would require little effort such that people actually DO it.
Questions, comments, criticisms?
