"Reclaiming the Message" — Workshop #4
Building Relationships With Members of Congress
With Nancy E. Young, Corey Saylor and Rebecca Raiser
June 29, 2006
Listen
to streaming audio from the workshop
Download Workshop Materials
Isn’t it time your Congressional representative heard directly from you – face to face – about NSA domestic wiretapping, Guantánamo, torture and other threats to our civil liberties? Many in Congress are refusing to stand up to a runaway Executive branch. But they must stand up if we are to continue to have three independent branches of government.
Why not use the upcoming Congressional recess from July 31- September 4 (click here to view the 2006 schedule) to gather community members and tell your senators and representative the importance of fulfilling their role as overseers of our constitutional protections? This is a critical time to hold our lawmakers accountable for the oaths they took to uphold our civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
In preparation for these important in-district meetings, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee sponsored a telephone workshop, "Building Relationships with Members of Congress," on Thursday, June 29, 2006.
Leading the workshop were three veterans of meetings with public officials:
Rebecca Raiser is a legislative aide to Rep. Bernie Sanders. Becca was struck by the depth and breadth of the grassroots resolution movement to stop the PATRIOT Act and its effect on Congress. She believes that we can keep that grassroots connection alive by cultivating relationships with members of Congress.
Nancy E. Young provided leadership to the successful grassroots campaign to pass a New York City resolution and created many resource materials that we may use to set up productive meetings with elected officials. Nancy has had first-hand experience talking to difficult representatives and turning them even slightly toward a willingness to act to protect the Bill of Rights.
Corey Saylor is Government Affairs Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) which has 32 chapters across the country. Corey has extensive experience working with Congressional members, both through those chapters and in Washington, D.C.
In addition to the panel, we heard from people working at the grassroots about their successes and frustrations when trying to communicate with their representatives and senators.
It is not unusual to feel that your representatives in Congress evade meetings with constituents and ignore the wishes of their constituents. On the other hand, you may have met with your representative or senator, but left the meeting feeling as though nothing was accomplished. And some of us are represented by someone who does everything right but has no power in Congress. Or a representative who votes with the tide no matter what. Below you will find some resources from the conference call, which will help you to deal with this issues or simply get started planning a meeting.
This telephone conference is part of the ongoing BORDC workshop series, "Reclaiming the Message," in which we share skill-building tools that will help bring awareness to our communities about the dismantling of the Bill of Rights and the need for action to restore our liberties.
The following handouts are in MS Word (.doc) format
Nancy E. Young:
Preparing
for your visit: an 8-step guide
Calling
an elected official
Pre-visit Guidelines
Handout
1: Elected official profile for BORDC
Handout
2: Sample letter to request a visit
Handout
3: Elected official visit training
Handout
4: Useful vocabulary for BORDC advocacy visits
Visit Guidelines
Handout
5: Elected official advocacy visit guidelines
Handout
6: Outline for a group visit to an elected official
Post-visit Follow-up
Handout
7: Post-visit feedback form
Handout
8: Sample post-visit letter
Corey Saylor (CAIR):
Best Practices
Handout
9: Arranging to Meet Elected Officials
Handout
10: Meeting with a Member of Congress
Handout
11: Working Effectively with a Congressional Office
Post-lobbying Follow-up
Handout 12: Lobbying Visit Report