I have been playing Cory Booker’s speech in the background all day, and in the early portion of the speech, he spent time reading letters from constituents. I found these letters, and the obvious sympathy that Booker had while reading them, extremely impressive.
It made me wonder, do people often write to their senators? I’ve called my senators in a few important moments, and my wife staged a protest in the office of a local representative that got some national news briefly. But it was a little bit off of my radar to also write letters.
If you write letters, do you ever have a sense that it reached someone’s eyes who could act on your message?
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I have been playing Cory Booker’s speech in the background all day, and in the early portion of the speech, he spent time reading letters from constituents. I found these letters, and the obvious sympathy that Booker had while reading them, extremely impressive.
It made me wonder, do people often write to their senators? I’ve called my senators in a few important moments, and my wife staged a protest in the office of a local representative that got some national news briefly. But it was a little bit off of my radar to also write letters.
If you write letters, do you ever have a sense that it reached someone’s eyes who could act on your message?
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Frequently enough. In the ones that I request a specific action I would get some form of reply, depending on the senator (The same basic letter got a reply from one of my senators but not the other).
Letters, no. Emails, yes.
I was always impressed by the responses I received from Sherrod Brown’s office. They would address my concerns thoroughly and mention the specifics of my situation. I’m not sure that he ever read my emails, but I’m confident that somebody in close proximity to him had.
My experience with my other Senators and representatives have ranged from generic (“Thank you for reaching out. I will keep your concerns in mind.”) to form letters that failed to address anything.
Via email, yes. One of my favorite emails I ever received was Mark Kelley’s response to me encouraging him to support kidney legislation.
I also email my local government representation quite a bit as well, though I don’t think they’re taking my request to support land value tax very seriously.
Edit: I should add that I’m not gullible enough to believe that Kelly himself responded to me, but I liked the response I got
My Senators are diehard Republicans. Red state problems.
I have called some of the more “moderate” or halfway sensible Senators who represent other states, though, to try and talk sense into them. We need the ones like those 4 who voted with Democrats yesterday on Canada tariffs to start standing up to Trump more and more. No sense in wasting my time and effort on Senators who can’t be moved to do the right thing just because they’re specifically tied to my state. US Senators are US Senators. They impact the whole country. So, I’ll reach out to any of them. One of the ones I called did vote with the Democrats yesterday.
I wrote my house rep (gop) after he voted to eviscerate medicaid that this summer he should crawl around on his hands and knees licking dog crap off the hot pavement. I hope he takes it to heart.
I don’t think “shadow senators” can do much (DC).
Write. It makes a difference even if you get no response or get a template response.
Because behind the scenes, they are compiling metrics. Like X number of people wrote to support or oppose such and such topic. And when the numbers add up they do influence policy pushed.
Yes. I want to be sure I get counted in their internal tally on various issues.
They also can just be straight up quite helpful. My friend’s little brother got snagged in a bait and switch scam from one of those shady camera stores out of NYC that had web storefronts. He was a student at the time so it was a pretty big chunk of money for him. I suggested he write his senator’s office. The office sent a letter to the scam store saying make the refund happen or else and that’s what the store did.
Some write index cards. Put a stamp on and send it. A stack a week.