Fight lobbying with gratitude.
Feb. 4th, 2012 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blimixThere's an idea I've been kicking around, and I really have to just put it out there rather than waiting until I figure out a way to pull it off personally.
A few years ago, there sprang up a website dedicated to countering corporate lobbying, by rewarding congresspeople for doing the right thing. It involved donations from us, the masses. The site quoted some senator, who explained that in Congress, when you vote with your conscience, nobody even calls or writes to say "Thank you". But when you vote the way the corporations want you to vote, a lobbyist shows up with a check for thousands of dollars.
[Sorry for the lack of links... If someone remembers and supplies them, I'll edit them in.]
With this imbalance of pressure, you don't have to be evil to act evil. You just have to not be steadfastly good. People respond to rewards! So providing rewards for being good is a great idea.
Unfortunately, the purses and wallets of the masses are tight. I don't know how that website is doing, but I personally neglected it after my first donation. It just didn't seem like an efficient way to do battle. I mean, my financial resources against BP? Against Archer Daniels Midland? Against Hollywood? Against Wall Street?!? Yeah, right.
But it doesn't have to be a financial battle. We can significantly change the reward gap, just by sending a well deserved "Thank you!" to our senators and congresspeople when they vote to preserve lives and freedoms instead of bowing to rich special interests. An outpouring of heartfelt thanks is a priceless reward. (Self esteem! Validation! "I'm a good person!" "I'm helping people!")
This sounds simple, and for those of you who conscientiously keep up on politics, it is simple. But it's not that easy for the rest of us, and so we need someone to put in the work to make it easy.
Step 1: Trusted policy wonks pay attention to important votes on issues that impact human rights. (Also other issues in which the "right/wrong" of the situation is clear. Oil profits versus breathable air, for example.) They run a website that shows a summary of each issue (with links to in-depth information), the status of the bill, and how each senator and representative voted (or their support or lack thereof for the bill, if the vote hasn't happened yet).
This sounds like the sort of thing that *must* already exist.
Step 2: *Easy* links to contact information for the reader's congresspeople. Saying "Call your senator" puts upon the reader the burden of finding out how. Even a link to Congress.org's directory involves entering your zip code, choosing and clicking on a congressperson to get to their bio, then noticing and clicking the "contact" tab, and finally deciding whether to call or write their home office or their Washington, D.C. office. Each of these steps will lose many readers. (And the "contact via web form" option requires logging in, and thus setting up an account in the first place. That'll lose almost everyone.)
Clean New York (now Clean and Healthy New York) did this right in this page: "Call your representative in Congress by dialing the number below." You enter your zip code, and the representative's name and phone number (plus picture and fax) show up right there, on the same page.
For this purpose, the congressperson's vote (or support) on the bill (or bills) in question should also show up here.
Step 3: Get lots of people involved. Putting catchy links to the site on Facebook and other popular social media is of course a great beginning.
One thing I'd like to see (and the part that I know least about setting up) is an organization of educational volunteers, who do school programs (elementary through high school). They'd talk about the issues of lobbying in general, then discuss a particular, recent vote in which the senator or representative for that district sided with the public, rather than with the corporations. The session would wrap up with a ten minute project in which each student composes a letter, thanking the congressperson and explaining how important that vote was to them (the student). (I wonder how efficient this would be, in comparison to spreading the word electronically, but I suppose that depends on how adept people are at the latter.)
Certainly, other ways of getting people to write or call would also be welcome.
Aside: This must never degenerate into a Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative issue, even if you know which side leans which way. Nearly every politician has some good and some bad in them, and we can encourage the good. (With encouragement, even Darth Vader had his moment.) Let's not alienate participants (and congresspeople) by telling them that they're on the wrong side.
...
The way I'm looking at it is: Our senators and representatives aren't the only ones screwing up. Since when did we, the people, become so busy that we can't spare the time to say "thank you" to someone who just helped us out? You wouldn't dream of snubbing someone who had given your car a jump start, or who had even just held a door open for you, right? Once it becomes as easy as seeing the vote and picking up the phone, we ought to be civilized enough to show our appreciation to someone voting in favor of equal rights, freedom, health, and the environment. Especially when they pass up a multi-thousand dollar bribe to do so. It's not just that it'll encourage them to do the right thing in the future; it's also common courtesy!
And I'll bet that if courtesy gets easier, it'll get way more common.
A few years ago, there sprang up a website dedicated to countering corporate lobbying, by rewarding congresspeople for doing the right thing. It involved donations from us, the masses. The site quoted some senator, who explained that in Congress, when you vote with your conscience, nobody even calls or writes to say "Thank you". But when you vote the way the corporations want you to vote, a lobbyist shows up with a check for thousands of dollars.
[Sorry for the lack of links... If someone remembers and supplies them, I'll edit them in.]
With this imbalance of pressure, you don't have to be evil to act evil. You just have to not be steadfastly good. People respond to rewards! So providing rewards for being good is a great idea.
Unfortunately, the purses and wallets of the masses are tight. I don't know how that website is doing, but I personally neglected it after my first donation. It just didn't seem like an efficient way to do battle. I mean, my financial resources against BP? Against Archer Daniels Midland? Against Hollywood? Against Wall Street?!? Yeah, right.
But it doesn't have to be a financial battle. We can significantly change the reward gap, just by sending a well deserved "Thank you!" to our senators and congresspeople when they vote to preserve lives and freedoms instead of bowing to rich special interests. An outpouring of heartfelt thanks is a priceless reward. (Self esteem! Validation! "I'm a good person!" "I'm helping people!")
This sounds simple, and for those of you who conscientiously keep up on politics, it is simple. But it's not that easy for the rest of us, and so we need someone to put in the work to make it easy.
Step 1: Trusted policy wonks pay attention to important votes on issues that impact human rights. (Also other issues in which the "right/wrong" of the situation is clear. Oil profits versus breathable air, for example.) They run a website that shows a summary of each issue (with links to in-depth information), the status of the bill, and how each senator and representative voted (or their support or lack thereof for the bill, if the vote hasn't happened yet).
This sounds like the sort of thing that *must* already exist.
Step 2: *Easy* links to contact information for the reader's congresspeople. Saying "Call your senator" puts upon the reader the burden of finding out how. Even a link to Congress.org's directory involves entering your zip code, choosing and clicking on a congressperson to get to their bio, then noticing and clicking the "contact" tab, and finally deciding whether to call or write their home office or their Washington, D.C. office. Each of these steps will lose many readers. (And the "contact via web form" option requires logging in, and thus setting up an account in the first place. That'll lose almost everyone.)
Clean New York (now Clean and Healthy New York) did this right in this page: "Call your representative in Congress by dialing the number below." You enter your zip code, and the representative's name and phone number (plus picture and fax) show up right there, on the same page.
For this purpose, the congressperson's vote (or support) on the bill (or bills) in question should also show up here.
Step 3: Get lots of people involved. Putting catchy links to the site on Facebook and other popular social media is of course a great beginning.
One thing I'd like to see (and the part that I know least about setting up) is an organization of educational volunteers, who do school programs (elementary through high school). They'd talk about the issues of lobbying in general, then discuss a particular, recent vote in which the senator or representative for that district sided with the public, rather than with the corporations. The session would wrap up with a ten minute project in which each student composes a letter, thanking the congressperson and explaining how important that vote was to them (the student). (I wonder how efficient this would be, in comparison to spreading the word electronically, but I suppose that depends on how adept people are at the latter.)
Certainly, other ways of getting people to write or call would also be welcome.
Aside: This must never degenerate into a Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative issue, even if you know which side leans which way. Nearly every politician has some good and some bad in them, and we can encourage the good. (With encouragement, even Darth Vader had his moment.) Let's not alienate participants (and congresspeople) by telling them that they're on the wrong side.
...
The way I'm looking at it is: Our senators and representatives aren't the only ones screwing up. Since when did we, the people, become so busy that we can't spare the time to say "thank you" to someone who just helped us out? You wouldn't dream of snubbing someone who had given your car a jump start, or who had even just held a door open for you, right? Once it becomes as easy as seeing the vote and picking up the phone, we ought to be civilized enough to show our appreciation to someone voting in favor of equal rights, freedom, health, and the environment. Especially when they pass up a multi-thousand dollar bribe to do so. It's not just that it'll encourage them to do the right thing in the future; it's also common courtesy!
And I'll bet that if courtesy gets easier, it'll get way more common.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-05 04:48 am (UTC)Aside: This must never degenerate into a Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative issue, even if you know which side leans which way. Nearly every politician has some good and some bad in them, and we can encourage the good.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-06 01:55 am (UTC)You see what I'm saying? Every time someone does anything for me, I say thank you; no matter what it is. Most of the time, though, people just say no problem, I'm just being helpful. They may or may not come back and do it again for me or someone else, but the way they accept the thanks makes the giving of it seem somewhat less profound. Does that make any sense?
I do love your idea; and I wish there were organizations out there like that. There's just so much information floating around out there about every little thing, though, that it'd definitely be a challenging thing to keep up with. I wish I knew how to set something like that up, too. At the very least, it'd be neat to volunteer for an organization like that.
Hugs you!
I hope this doesn't come out sounding offensive or like I'm trying to belittle your idea. I didn't mean for it to sound that way; and I'm sorry if you are offended.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-06 02:52 am (UTC)I can think of three reasons to not dismiss the effect of gratitude, one of which you have already mentioned: Strength in numbers. The message gets repeated until (hopefully) they start listening to it.
The second is that the difference I want to make isn't the difference between gratitude and nothing: It's the difference between gratitude and ingratitude. For example, I consider it polite but not especially polite to thank someone for holding a door for me... But to not offer thanks is impolite. By offering thanks, we not only provide a reward, we also take away the bitterness that may come from doing the right thing and *not* getting thanked for it.
The third, and possibly most important, is that when the deed is not trivial, and the thanks are sincere, it does in fact result in a heartwarming morale boost. The difference between that, and just saying thanks because it's polite, is clear to both parties. I think the former cannot be dismissed, despite the commonality of the latter. (This is from personal experience.)
(I suppose that for superheroes, gratitude for great deeds could eventually become trivially accepted, but when the time comes that we can mistake politicians for superheroes, my job will be done.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-02-08 02:09 am (UTC)