how to call your reps
In this issue: Doing the bare minimum... so you can too!
Short of armchair-diagnosing myself with anxiety, I think it’s fair to say that I’ve been afflicted with cowardice for my whole life. Fear governs my decisions perhaps more than it does the average person. There is a lot to worry about!
For most of my childhood, for example, I had a crippling fear of calling people on the phone. Didn’t matter whether I was calling a close friend or being forced to order pizza by parents who claimed to be supporting my development but who I privately suspect were just entertained by my acute discomfort. My body would flood with adrenaline. I would freeze like a rabbit that had just scented a fox.
After phone banking a lot for presidential campaigns in college, this discomfort eased a little bit. But just a little bit.
It’s possible this has something to do with how challenging I find it to take up space in locations that aren’t my space. I frequently feel like an intruder, like I’m not allowed to be somewhere—even if that somewhere is a pizza joint where I have literally paid money to come and pick up a pizza. Always, there’s this niggling sense that I’m unwelcome unless I have been explicitly welcomed.
Calling people feels like teleporting directly into their space without being welcomed; it feels like an invasion. Calling political offices? That feels like invading some kind of underground temple riddled with snakes and booby traps.
But in December I got tired of just watching a genocide in real-time on Instagram and I took a deep breath and I called all three of my representatives in Congress. Several times. Then I did it again the next week, and the week after that. In a fit of rage at seeing yet another video of a dismembered toddler, I called again today. Every subsequent call has been easier than the previous.
If you’re a normal, brave person who does this kind of thing regularly, you can skip the rest of this newsletter. But if you’re like me, and if contacting your reps is something you feel like you should do but you can’t seem to work up the nerve, here are a few things to keep in mind that might help. They helped me.
You don’t have to convince anyone of anything
Calling your rep is not your opportunity to speak with them directly and move their spirit and change the course of the future forever. That’s not how it works. When you call, either you will get sent to voicemail or a low-level staffer will pick up the phone. They’ll let you deliver your message, thank you for calling, and hang up. They will not quiz you. They will not challenge you. They will not ask you for anything except your ZIP code so they can enter your information into a spreadsheet.
Because that’s what your call is really about: adding a line to that spreadsheet. Your members of Congress are constantly preoccupied with getting reelected. If a lot of people call in to express their anger about the same issue, politicians will notice and they will act accordingly.
You will talk to a human person
The low-level staffer who picks up the phone probably has just as much anxiety and ennui and pre-lunch hunger as you do. Be polite and do normal phone-call things, like introduce yourself and speak to them in a nice voice. If you’re using a script from an advocacy organization, include something personal that makes it clear you really care about this issue.
For example: “I felt physically ill when I heard about six-year-old Hind Rajab, who the IDF slaughtered along with her family in their car. This atrocity is not unusual. Twenty-seven thousand people are dead. Millions are starving. My senator’s silence tells me he thinks it’s okay.”
The staffer will log your call and put you on the spreadsheet, but it’s possible they might also have something rattled loose in them. At the end of the day we’re all just souls yearning to recognize each other. Never hurts to try.
You can use an app
A friend recommended 5 calls, a very handy tool that has, frankly, changed the game for me. It suggests issues you may want to call about, provides essential context and news updates, gives you a short script, and shows the number for your rep’s office. Everything you need is in one place, making it a piece of cake to spend less than five minutes doing your calls. If you are also a little to-do list freak like me, then you will enjoy being able to check off boxes after each call.
You gotta get your friends on board
Much like voting, calling your reps is not a highly effective practice if you’re the only one doing it. I finally got around to picking up the phone after the 12th or maybe the 35th plea from one of my friend’s Instagram stories to call my reps. I knew she was doing it, and I felt a growing sense of anxiety and shame that I was not also doing it, until I finally just did it. And guess what? It felt pretty good to count myself among the people Doing Things. To no longer be the person wringing my hands, watching awful things happen through the safety of my phone screen, and hoping someone else would Do Something.
Now I am here to exert the same pressure upon my peers: Call your reps. Call them often. Remember that in this ostensible democracy we live in, their work and their purpose is to serve you. You have a right to enter their space and remind them of this fact. You do not need an invitation to participate in a system to which you already belong.
It took being witness to unspeakable horror and injustice for me to grow a spine and start doing this. I want this nightmare to end, but it’s hard to see how. The only thing I can do is keep calling and hope this bare-minimum action can be a drop of water in the sea change.
And if (when?) I don’t need to call about this anymore, I hope my cowardice will have retreated enough that I’ll continue calling my reps about other important shit. Like this planet, and how they should take better care of it.
Try it out
If you’re also nauseated, infuriated, or deflated, try taking a few minutes this afternoon to tell your reps how you feel. Lately I have been using some combination of these two asks/scripts from 5 Calls:
Demand Accountability of US Involvement in the Bombing of Gaza — for senators to support S. Res. 504
Call for De-escalation and Ceasefire in Israel and Occupied Palestine — for senators and representatives to call for a ceasefire and support H. Res. 786
Check here first to see if your reps have already supported a ceasefire in some way. For example, when I call Diana DeGette’s office, I first express my thanks for her previous statement calling for a ceasefire, then I ask that she oppose any further funding to Israel. But when I call my senators, I express my disappointment that they have been silent.
You may find it helpful to follow provided scripts, or you may do what I do and make it your own. What matters is that you become another entry in that spreadsheet; that you add one more line to a list that is slowly becoming too long for our government to ignore.
And once you make your calls, reach out to a few friends and ask them to do the same. If I can do it, so can they.
Now Is Long grows exclusively by word of mouth; you can help it reach more people by sharing this email with a friend who can bring some “I want to speak to the manager” energy to the political engagement party.