#and memory problems bc i probably repeated the same bits of information 5 seperate times in this post

[teardew]

supporting palestine: u.s. citizen’s beginner’s guide to calling congress

5/22/2021: i’m making this for anyone who is a u.s. voter intimidated to call congress, as a person who has trouble speaking on the phone and didn’t know how to call congress 5 days ago

5/28/2021: edits made to the script & description of HR2590 since i paraphrased the bill incorrectly. apologies!

i had a lot of questions but i asked myself “if i could only make 1 phone call to each of my officials, which way would be the most effective?” so i’m going to try to be as thorough as possible

this guide will be specifically about calling your elected officials to support HR2590: a bill to protect the human rights of palestinians and ensure u.s. taxpayer money isn’t used to fund israel’s further annexation of palestinian land in violation of international law

the united states provides $3.8 billion to israel annually and is responsible for making up 20% of israel’s overall defense budget

i encourage us citizens to call congress in addition to emailing & signing petitions because calling is the most effective way to get your voice heard and disrupt congress from home. emails and petitions these days are mostly read by algorithms and responded back with auto replies, and while the issues are counted, there’s no guarantee an actual person will see it

finding & calling your officials

find your city’s district representative here and click on their name to be redirected to their individual site. (or if you don’t know who that is you could just google “your city, state district representative”) find their office locations and call their LOCAL DISTRICT office. local offices are less busy and calls are more likely to go through

here is a script to base your representative call on:

“may i speak to the staffer assigned to foreign policy” ¹

...

“hello my name is [NAME] a constituent ² from [CITY] and i am calling about palestine to request [REPRESENTATIVE] cosponsor HR2590 to protect the human rights of palestinians and ensure u.s. taxpayer money is not used to fund israel’s further annexation of palestinian land in violation of international law. i am opposed to the use of my taxpayer's dollars to fund israel's apartheid and brutalization of civilians in palestine”

...

“thank you for your time, goodbye” ³

¹    talking to the correct staffer will get your message where it needs to go faster. but if they are unavailable skip this completely and give your message to the person currently on the phone

²   its important to mention that you’re a constituent because officials care more about the voters in their district than others outside of it

³   they may ask for your number and/or street address before this so be prepared to give that information. if this is a voicemail say instead: “my callback number is [#] thank you for your time, goodbye”

find your senators here and click on their names to be redirected to their individual sites. find their office locations and call their LOCAL DISTRICT office first

here is a similar script to base your senator calls on:

“may i speak to the staffer assigned to foreign policy”

“hello my name is [NAME] a [STATE] constituent from [DISTRICT #] and i am calling about palestine to request [SENATOR] cosponsor HR2590 to protect the human rights of palestinians and ensure u.s. taxpayer money is not used to fund israel’s further annexation of palestinian land in violation of international law. i am opposed to the use of my taxpayer's dollars to fund israel's apartheid and bombing of civilians in palestine”

“thank you for your time, goodbye”

done! if your call seems too short, that’s fine! what matters is the substance of your call not the length. if you feel like leaving a voicemail is useless and calling is a waste of time unless you talk to a real person, it’s not! your voicemail will be counted and sorted under the issue you stated, so as long as you made your request clear you’re good. it’ll just get logged faster if you talk to an actual person.

also if you can i recommend calling everyday until your representative cosponsors it :) on average it doesn’t take more than 5-10 minutes to make 3 calls in my experience (because i run into voicemails most of the time)

tips

1.   say at least one sentence about how this personally affects you to make your message stand out and show the staffer you care. example: “as a taxpayer ...” “as an asian american...” “as the child of a veteran...” etc

2.   research them and appeal to their concerns. this can be as easy as looking up their twitter. for example my representative recently made a statement supporting the aapi community so i chose to appeal to them like so:

“as an asian american myself i thank [REPRESENTATIVE] for their support of the aapi community, but i ask of them to extend the same sympathy to the asians overseas who are being brutalized by israeli forces funded by us taxpayer dollars like mine”

3.   if your representative supports israel say that you will donate to their opponent, support campaigns against them, or not vote for them in the future to get them to care

4.   if you’re going to do any or all of the above it would be helpful to write it out beforehand if you’re nervous you’ll forget or fumble during your call ... like i did ......

5.   but it’s also okay if you fumble because it’ll show them that you’re human and you care! as long as your request is clear and they know that this is important to you as a constituent, you’re good. remember to be kind to the staffer as well, they’re human too, and you want them to side with you!

you can do it !!!

all this comes from my own experience talking to legislative aides on the phone for the past few days. but again, i didn’t know how to do this a week ago, so if there’s anything i’m missing please let me know! i will also update this post if any of the information i presented here is wrong

if you can’t call 

you can also text your elected officials to email them by sending “RESIST” to 50409 and “PTFDZN” to 50409 to sign a petition in support of HR2590.

it’s really easy to use, i tried it out myself and got emails back from my officials so it works!

(you can also use it to identify your representatives and get their numbers which saves you the time of going through those links i provided, BUT it will only provide their dc office lines, which have less impact than calling their district lines)

i hope this helps !

#tear.txt #free palestine #stop asian hate #im sorry if this is excessively wordy i wanted to be thorough #and answer the questions i had before i knew how to call #can you tell i hav anxiety #and memory problems bc i probably repeated the same bits of information 5 seperate times in this post #anyway i hav a headache i cant look at this anymore #also im rly sorry if ur not american but im not putting this under a cut </3 i hope u understand #txt