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NireBryce
@NireBryce

I have written my congresspeople, and my state legislators, about pretty much every hot button issue for years. You know what it does? Add one more person worth of 'your constituents are angry you are/aren't doing X'. That's useful sometimes, but it won't get you change, not nationally. Not even if everyone wrote every senator.

It can get you small things, sometimes. But usually, it changes nothing but making them a little more afraid of the vote next time. It may have made a difference awhile ago, but now that most of the things are form letters they receive, I doubt it's given that much heed outside of the few congresspeople who have bragged about reading all of theirs. They probably read a tenth.

The right wing is in part successful because the local party works hand in glove with it's local and federal legislators, it's law firms and it's think tanks and whatever else. It is not because people on the right write to their senators more. This should be obvious but somehow it keeps being ignored.

There are much better things you can be doing with your time. I write to inform them, the times I do write, hoping maybe an aide will be able to say something in a hallway. But I do not delude myself that it has high chances to do even that -- Politician's stances are fixed, generally, unless you can make them see you through some form of disruption, large gathering/rally, or protest that forces the media to care for a bit, even if to vilify you.

And everything else has so much inertia that the only way it changes is by it becoming politically embarassing instead of just a thing people are angry about, no matter how injust it is.

Change isn't coming from the people already there. And it's not really coming through elections, not federally. So focus on community -- people and movement -- instead, since, well, that's our only hope.


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in reply to @NireBryce's post:

when somebody gives me advice on how to change a big systemic problem I start to wonder if they really think that that would work, why they haven't done it already. And if they have done it, why they think it works. And if they do think it would work, why they haven't done it. The conclusion I come to is that they're either evil (defined abstractly as "Someone who puts in effort to make the world different from how you want the world to be) or stupid (defined abstractly as "Somebody who does things to further their own goals that do not work").

If I'm in a good mood I remember that I'm supposed to never attribute to malice what is more easily explained by stupidity, but if I'm not in a great mood I don't remember that. Why are they asking me to write to my congressman? What do they hope to accomplish by giving me that advice?

they're advocating harm reduction as the smallest step someone can do in politics, which functions as a filter to dismiss anyone who doesn't do it -- a useful tactic for things that aren't wasted effort, and in fairness the form letters aren't that much effort.

but if someones theory of change is "maybe the senators will do something even though we don't have a voting plurality", it's not a theory of change, it's just fantasy, outside of things the senators are trying to slip under people's noses, when the writing campaigns can actually maybe make an impact.

but the truth of the matter is, the legislators know right and wrong, they know good and evil. they just don't care.

so, it's a tool, one that can be very effective, but only with the right conditions, where it won't be its a waste. not throwing out tools is important; using them just because one feels bad not throwing them out is a problem.