Effectiveness

In the last several months, many sources have been urging people to call their elected officials to demand they work towards things like immediate ceasefire and humanitarian aid in Palestine, along with the withholding of weapons shipments to Israel. Recently, I’ve wondered how effective calls to representatives are. From some brief reading, it seems like effectiveness widely ranges, from being significantly impactful to having no impact, depending on the specifics of the situation. For example, one official was quoted saying they wouldn’t change their policy stance, no matter how many constituents called their office with opposing views (this wasn’t related to Palestine or Israel).

Calling can powerfully nudge officials in the desired direction, under certain conditions, such as:

  1. the official is soon up for re-election & the official believes they could jeopardize their chances at winning re-election by not heeding the messages of the calls they’re receiving
  2. the issue is not a hotly contested one
  3. the issue IS a hotly contested one, but a critical mass of people have spoken up about it in the official’s district, such that condition #1 applies

Based on these conditions, I think now is a key time when calling your officials for Palestine could have high impact, especially if your official is up for re-election. The call to support Palestine is becoming louder and louder, and if your official is up for re-election, you can help make it clear to them that this an issue they can’t ignore without hurting their re-election chances.

Approach

I came across some of the below tips for calling officials, which I found useful.

  1. Add 6 contacts to your phone: the local & DC phone numbers for your 2 senators and 1 House representative for your district (i.e. 2 numbers for each of your 3 officials).
    • Prefix the names of these contacts with something distinct, so that you can easily search for them when you’re calling officials.
      • e.g. “EO - Sen Durbin DC Office” (EO for elected official, then search for “EO” when wanting to see all the numbers of your officials)
    • When reading, I came across multiple examples of people who make 6 calls to their officials everyday – one to each of these numbers. To be transparent, I don’t plan on being able to maintain this level of commitment, but I find it inspiring and a good example of the level to which you can take this. Find what works for you and feels like a good level of contribution.
  2. Come up with your own scripts for the issues you care about (vs. using templates / scripts).
    • Yes, this takes more time, but it’s been found that officials often heed personal stories and messages more than templates, scripts, etc. used on a mass scale. I.e. if an office gets 100 calls with the exact same script used, generally, each call has less weight vs. if unique scripts were used.
    • Luckily, this is an upfront investment that will pay off, as the script can ideally be repeatedly re-used within the same topic / issue.
    • This is purely my own 2 cents – ie not verified with other sources – but my guess is that it’s best to keep the script as clear, concise, and short as possible. The person taking your call has to relay the message to the official, and as the length of your message increases, my guess is that each additional word carries less weight / is less likely to be relayed to the official. Imagine if you were taking notes to relay to an official. The most supportive message for this task is one that has clear, succint points that can be easily repeated to another person. It would also have the main points pruned and prioritized so that the most important messages get highlighted, rather than a laundry list of any point you could make about the topic.
    • Introduce yourself (name) and state that you’re a constituent of the given official.
    • Again, this is just my own 2 cents, but I like ending the message by saying something like “I look forward to seeing how [official’s name] will respond to this critical moment.” It feels like this makes explicit the fact that your eyes are on your representative and that you’ll take stock of their response come time to vote.
  3. Be sure to give your zip code if a staffer answers the phone. If you’re leaving a voice mail, I’ve heard that it’s best to give your full street address. If you don’t, they might not log your call and tally your message since they have to verify that you live within the official’s district.
  4. Educate yourself. It’s good to not put too high of a standard on yourself here – i.e. you don’t have to be an expert to call your official – but your call will be more effective if you know enough to make informed points (which of course is, in itself, a valuable thing). Calls that sound uninformed are much more likely to be dismissed by the staffer and sway the official less.
    • As part of this, try to educate yourself on what your official’s existing stances are on the issues you’re calling about. E.g. if you’re calling about a ceasefire in Palestine and your official has already repeatedly made public demands for this, you might have a different message for them than if they’ve been silent. You may want to thank them and urge them to keep up this effort.
  5. If you feel nervous about making a call and having a live staffer answer, that’s OK – you got this :). You could start by calling outside of business hours, when you’ll just be prompted to leave a voicemail. Then, once you’re comfortable with this, you can try calling during business hours and get used to giving your message to a live staffer. Remember, they receive calls everyday, and, if you give some attention and care to your message, there’s a decent chance you’ll be one of the more thoughtful, informed callers they get that day.