Ever complain about your point of view not being reflected in government?
Before you complain, make sure it’s not your fault.
Our form of government – representative self-government – relies on the feedback and involvement of citizens in order to actually “represent” them. That means you help government operate more effectively (for you!) by contacting elected officials on a regular basis – whether they like it or not.
But when it comes to contacting elected officials, just remember the old adage that “it’s not what you say, but how you say it”.
How you say something can be just as important as what you say. As Hubert Humphrey put it, “The right to be speak does not necessarily include the right to be taken seriously”. If you have something important to say about government, take the time to say it in the most effective way possible.
Effective Lobbying Plays on How They Think
To understand how to lobby effectively it helps to get inside the mind of an elected official, (despite how scary that may seem with some politicians). Generally they’re overly concerned with their next election, which means they’re constantly trying to get a handle on what voters think.
That’s where effective lobbying – (and YOU) – comes in.
The Tip of the Iceberg
Many legislators get a sense of their district through what could be called the “iceberg phenomenon”. They represent thousands of people and, since they can’t get to know them all, they tend to look at people they come in contact with as representing “the tip of an iceberg” – and they don’t want to be the Titanic. For example, if twenty people write their office asking them to vote against a particular bill, they think that there must be hundreds more who feel the same way but just didn’t write.
As a grassroots activist, this gives you a tremendous opportunity. By joining together with others in a combined effort, you can have an impact that far exceeds your numbers.
Spontaneity Counts
A natural consequence of the iceberg phenomenon is that the more spontaneous the contact, the greater the impact.
If a grassroots campaign looks orchestrated, (such as a petition drive), it may tend to be discounted. The town hall meeting and the grocery store illustrate the point. If three people ask a question about tax increases during the open-ended question and answer time at a town hall meeting, a legislator will think that a lot of people are concerned. But if three people stop them in the grocery store to ask about tax increases, they think “everyone” must be talking about it.
Personal is Better
The more personal the contact is, the more effective it will be. For example, a stack of thirty postcards can be viewed as just “pieces of paper’, but thirty people at a meeting, (or showing up at their office), creates a more vivid and lasting impression.
Make it personal, but be polite.
Of course this doesn’t mean that if you engage in effective lobbying, then everything government does will suddenly start swinging your way, especially since there are other opinions out there besides yours. But it does mean that YOURS will at least be heard…and be added to those of people who think like you do.
Don’t make it easy for them to ignore your views.
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Have any thoughts or lobbying experiences of your own to share? Add them in the comments section below.
If You Build It, They Will Come
A review of some recent headlines:
Despite the fact that when the scandal first broke, the government claimed that it was just harvesting “meta data” – supposedly just the same records that your phone company has – we now learn what most people suspected: that they are indeed collecting emails, texts, Internet search and social media data, along with some content. Further, the snooping isn’t limited to communications from terrorist suspects outside the US, but covers those between regular people right here in the good ol’ US of A.
We were told that this was exclusively about stopping terrorists, but now we find out that the NSA has been sharing its notes with the DEA to assist in its investigations too. Worse, the DEA is hiding the use of that information from judges and prosecutors; meaning there’s no legitimate oversight of their criminal surveillance practices, making it harder for defendants to challenge the evidence against them.
Now before you shrug this off as not being your problem, (hey, it’s drug dealers!), read further.
According to a New York Times report last week, other government agencies have been looking to get their hands in the NSA’s treasure chest too, in order to “curb drug trafficking, cyber-attacks, money laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement”.
Still not close enough to home? A Reuters report found that the IRS had also been receiving NSA intelligence by way of the DEA connection. You’ve dealt with the IRS before, haven’t you? Remember, those are the guys whose leadership and staffers have been found to deliberately target certain Americans based on their political beliefs.
The other reason these agencies want access to the NSA’s data is that any warrants they get for their own investigations have to be specific, whereas the NSA obtains its vast data through secret, generalized warrants. It’s just easier not to follow the rules.
What we have now with the NSA is an agency that is taking advantage of the legitimate need Americans see in spying on our enemies to build a vast infrastructure that is now being directed at us, even if just incrementally. But as long as such an infrastructure exists, it WILL be used for things that neither Congress nor the American people ever intended.
It is metastasizing into less of an intelligence agency and more of an intelligence warehouse that is subject to being accessed by other government agencies whose missions would never allow them to conduct this type of spying on Americans.
If you build it, they will come.
Meanwhile, some politicians on both sides of the aisle act as though there’s nothing to see here. Liberals who manage to find a right to an abortion hiding in the Fourth Amendment don’t seem to know the meaning of the right of Americans to “be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects”. And some “conservatives” have forgotten that one of the defining aspects of real conservatism is a very healthy dose of skepticism and distrust of government.
But the politics here is clearly on the side of liberty. Sixty-nine percent of Americans believe that this is a real scandal that needs to be taken seriously, despite Obama’s lumping it into what he recently referred to as “phony scandals”. Most people think it’s a pretty big deal.
It is now possible to construct a government that could legally snoop on the content of every conversation we have, know everywhere we go, when and with whom, (via cell phone location data and closed circuit cameras), every dollar we spend, when, where and on what – and record every bit of it. And that information would most certainly enable the government to catch a lot of bad guys and save a lot of lives, but would that make it worth the costs?
Once we decide that we are willing to give up “x” in exchange for more security, we’ll soon hear from the “If it would save a single life” crowd telling us that we should also be willing to give up “y”, and then “z”, etc..
As Ben Franklin put it, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety”.
We’re on a slippery slope.