When your local representation knows they can afford to ignore you...

Post date: 2021-06-15 09:29:27

How do you bug them to better represent you???

I just learned that the Ohio state house may be hearing 2 bills to prevent so-called critical race theory being taught in the state. I want to let my state rep know that as his constituent I want him to oppose these idiotic measures. But I know he's an asshole and his other constituents seem happy with it.

Our local Dems are pretty exhausted and demoralized, our county went about 75% Trump in November 2020 and many of my neighbors still have their Trump flags flying, literally and (I assume, since I avoid talking politics with almost everyone I meet) figuratively. I know that the changes I want to see are long term fixes, requiring the old Jewish thinking of "it's not your job to finish the work, just to do the work" (and I promise that I am trying to introduce low-key questions in the minds of those I do talk with regularly). How do I apply that thinking to specific laws designed to make the long term even more awful than it is now? Assume I feel similarly about the heartbeat bills, the laws designed to criminalize protests, the laws designed to make it less illegal to run protestors over with your car, the laws about removing public health policy from the purview of the governor, etc. etc.

I have been sending money to people where I can, but a lot of the work I have ended up supporting over the last year is out of state, or at a national level. I am not sure how to amplify my voice in Ohio. It feels really different out here in the country than it does even in Columbus, my closest city, and I can sense the strands of the good ol' boy/evangelical/patriarchal web quivering around me.

I write letters. My state rep has never answered one from me, and neither has fucking Rob Portman unless it's to tell me how good he feels about voting against impeachment, the craven motherfucker.

Please no doomsaying in your replies! I have plenty of that in my own head and find it distressing to read other MeFites express blanket despair. I know we're all in the muck right now.

Also I will never be a phone banker, I want to stay on my keyboard. I am not an introvert but I haaaate cold calling for any reason.

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