Thursday, March 23, 2006

New Roots Project Campaign: Look Them In the Eye And Say, "Censure the President."

There's a simple, powerful new Roots Project campaign afoot: the Roots Project bloggers are asking people to visit their senators' local offices (tomorrow, if possible, because many senators are home now but are returning to D.C. on Monday) and individually, politely, firmly ask them to support Feingold's censure resolution.

It's not a protest. It's not a group thing. It's just individual citizens, looking a staffer in the eye and saying, I'm who your senator is working for, and I want him/her to censure the President for spying on Americans without getting a warrant first.

All politics is local, Tip O'Neill used to say. This is as local as it gets. Buy bag lunches for a couple of coworkers and carpool at lunch. Swing by as you're running errands. Ask your next door neighbor to go with you: multiply your effect. But please make every effort to do it, because just as one constituent phone call is worth 100 out-of-staters' calls, one personal visit is worth 100 phone calls.

You can find your senators' district office addresses at this site. [UPDATE, MARCH 24: Click on the senator's name in the Senate directory to go to his/her website, then explore that site until you find the contact info, and please let me know if you have any trouble finding it (see my comment on this).]

For folks in Eugene, OR (my town), the addresses are:

Ron Wyden (D-OR)
151 West 7th Ave
Suite 435
Eugene, OR 97401
(541) 431-0229

Gordon Smith (R-OR)
Federal Building
211 East 7th Avenue, Room 202
Eugene, OR 97401
Phone: 541.465.6750

UPDATE, MARCH 24, 8:18 AM P.T.: Good post about this effort at FireDogLake, especially if you'd like more insight into the issue and talking points. Remember: it's the warrants, not the spying.

PLEASE VISIT VICHYDEMS HOME

4 comments:

The Film Diva said...

Ping back at you -- I read your article this morning (you are part of my "Daily Cuppa" blogroll). I was talking with a good friend today about how to make these types of efforts penetrate further and I think we need to focus on these back-room consultants. No more anonymous pollsters. Also, what the heck is James Carville doing??

Anonymous said...

I wasn't able to find my Senators' district office addresses at that website. Maybe there's been some confusion. Phone numbers and emails aren't distrit office addresses.

There are links from there to the individual Senators' websites, but some of those sites list district offices, and some don't.

Anonymous said...

I wasn't able to find my Senators' district office addresses at that website... There are links from there to the individual Senators' websites, but some of those sites list district offices, and some don't.

Sometimes it's tricky to figure out where some senators have put the contact info on their websites; if I didn't know better I'd think they were focused primarily on happenings in D.C. and didn't care much about staying in touch with their constituents! (/snark).

However, with a little digging you can find the local offices for every senator somewhere on their website. Click on the senator's name in the Senate directory to go to his/her website, then explore that site until you find the contact info.

As an experiment, I was able to find the info for ten out of ten senators:

Senator Akaka
Senator Alexander
Senator Allard
Senator Allen
Senator Baucus
Senator Bayh
Senator Bennett
Senator Biden
Senator Bingaman
Senator Bond

I am working on a comprehensive contact list for the entire Senate, precisely because it can be hard to find this info. But for now this Senate directory is the best we've got, so I urge people to do the best they can with it.

If anyone gets a firm commitment from a senator to support Feingold, would you please let me know here, so I can update everyone else?

And rt, if you let me know what state you're in, I'll be glad to post that specific info right away.

Thanks for all the hard work --

Anonymous said...

Do you think there's any point in visiting Clinton and Schumer, my Senators? They are not likely to be swayed by pressure from constituents are they? Do they even know we exist?