Contact Your Representatives 

As a note, mailing your Member of Parliament in Canada IS free. It's your right to have free and open communication with your MP, so when you go to mail a letter to them, the post office must deliver it without charge.

This is criminally underviewed.

I interned for a US Senator at one of their local offices for a few months after college (too many years ago). My advice? Keep the phone call brief. We had a 1 inch by 2 inch box to summarize the phone call. So long, rambling calls wouldn't get the summaries they deserved. Also, don't expect to get into a discussion/debate with the person you're talking to - we were explicitly told not to engage with the person on the phone. I was reprimanded for telling a caller that there were 9 Supreme Court Justices, not 11.

The neat thing about pushing us to make better appeals is that we inherently have to spend more time thinking about our own position. This leads to two possible outcomes (in my mind). 1) You have a clearer idea of what is really taking place and you make your appeal more rational and, perhaps, realistic (to whatever degree). Or 2) You have a clearer idea of what is really taking place and you change your position because you've now thought about the problem from another perspective. In either case, your effect on the world is improved because it's grounded in both reality and a wider array of perspectives. So all the while, we're watching this looking for how we can get our representatives to do what we want better, and we come away with a slightly broader view of the world (whether we realize it or not).

Thank you! This was incredibly helpful, and a bit empowering. I called my Senators for the first time ever today, and wish I had seen this first. I'm going to be passing it along, as the "focus on your reps" is a point I think many lose sight of.

As a staffer and policy advisor to a legislator: this. This video is correct. Don't copy and paste forms, don't talk about things you don't understand, and don't - don't, DO NOT - give up. Be smart, be polite, be forceful, and do the work. It's the only way to make things better.

Thank you, Dan. With everything going on right now, this is the motivation I needed to drive me to action in the following weeks and months.

I’ve watched loads of Folding Ideas vids over the years but this is the first time this has cropped up in my recommendeds. Really excellent, I wish more people had seen it

from my experience dealing with letters from a minister/senator as a govt department a lot of the time the letter/email will be forwarded to the relevant department for a response. Form letters get attached to the same response. A unique letter needs its own response written.

Very informative. Thanks man.

Belated note: on a local (US county) level, I've heard of members of advocacy boards being invited to meet with staffers on their topic of interest. This isn't something you'll be doing when you start out, though.

I send lots of letters to my representatives, always backed up with links and with specific questions. Sometimes for support when they're facing propaganda scrutiny and sometimes to voice concern over policy positions that I disagree with. On more than one occasion, there was course correction. Might not have been because of me, but if I was one of thousand voices sharing a concern, that sparks a politician to action. A thousand potential votes? No one is letting that slide. I also try to have my major know me. He (because lets be honest, patriarchy) has to know who I am, what my concerns are and, very important, that I support him as major.

This is a fantastic video! A perfect response to the post-election anger felt by so many.

Thank you for making this video, Dan. This is exactly what we need. Sharing where I can.

This gives me hope.

EXCELLENT video, thank you! I shared it with my friends and quoted/summarized it on Facebook with a link to it.

Hair! FABULOUS HAIR

This video is awesome and informative. Thanks for breaking this down for us. I'll definitely share this video. Thank you so much.

Great video and a great message! Super informative, thank you for doing this

Instruction unclear, I contact based department

Thanks for that. Really encouraging information.

Now what I need is a video telling me how the hell I can get the energy for contacting my reps back when I'm working a fast food job 30+ hours a week and spending most of my free time struggling with mental illnesses.

Thank you so much for this. It's helpful, digestible, and empowering. Civics classes should play this video

Very informative and relevant. This is a video I'll definitely save for future reference,, and I imagine others will too. Keep up the good work.

Depending on your political system and how close elections are, when it comes to an adversarial relationship you need to consider whether your efforts would be better spent on a supportive relationship with a political rival.

This is excellent!!! Thank you!!

As far as I know, at least in Canada (I've worked in an MP's office in Ottawa) I think letters to your MP do not require stamping, hence it is indeed free. Although I don't remember if this only applies to letter sent to the House of Commons or if it includes the local riding as well....

Thank you - very informative video. I know the abstraction was intentional to make the video applicable to a wide variety of places/situations, but I felt like an example would have made the information more much concrete. Some thing like "Now that we've gone though the overall guidelines, here X and here's how they contacted their representative and got Y done".

really informative, thank you!

alright, i'm starting to feel a bit better now. gotta pull myself together... I burned myself out worrying and screaming at myself in the mirror like a dumb dumb

This is incredibly informative, and something I've wondered about for a while. Thanks a lot for posting this.

Great video.

Thank you for this, it's going to be really useful in the future, at least for me.

What a cutie!

One letter per complaint eh, can’t wait to spend all weekend making 500 calls to Jason Kenny 🤣

Dan, we need more of you talking sense to the world. Please.

I want to be more politically active. This is a great video, thank you.

Thanks, for this.

I know this video is old but I just found it and it’s so so well made, I appreciate the general and comprehensive “how-to-adult” format. Thank you!

Why's the like bar disabled? I wanna smash that shit. Thanks for helping inspire me to contact my representatives.

Hey, Dan, is there anything in here you'd want to revisit or add to six years on?

I have a Canada-specific question: my MP has two phone numbers, one for the constituency office and one for the parliament office. You say it's better to contact the local office, but why? What's the difference?

Thank you so much for posting this. :)

Are most of your followers American or Canadian? Or are you just really big in Djibouti?

You mentioned that representatives usually don't read or pay attention to mail or contact outside of their constituents (like out of town, state, etc), but would it still be worth it to try to get in touch with these reps?

Please investigate a resource based economy.

This video could be re released.

As a resident of the State of Texas, I say that this information will do precisely nothing for me. My city is gerrymandered so that, of the six members of the city council, all are republican in spite of 35% of the electorate being Democrat. My congressional district was held by the man who screamed out "YOU LIE" at Obama during a speech and "BABY KILLER" to a democrat during an address in congress until he stepped down and was replaced by his hand-picked replacement with a vote of over 80% My state representative's seat is gerrymandered such that the republican always wins by a margin of 40% or more and my governor's office is held by the man who believes trans people do not exist and even if they did then they should be arrested for it. All of this combines to place me in the least representative location in the nation. I say that because, theatrics aside, these are people who could literally say or do anything, but the republican party has such a hold on power that the (R) behind their name on the ballot guarantees their job security. They do not need, nor even want, to hear what I or anyone else has to say. Even other conservatives are ignored because these politicians know they have aligned the system perfectly to prevent any significant risk to their power. Thanks for trying anyway, Dan.

Very informative, now I just need a shortcut, like pills for muscles or wee-wee bibles for impotence

algorithm

How do we signal boost this, this is so much more important before the trumps get on the ballet

Okay, so what I'm about to write is defenitely not an attack on you, the channel, this video or anything like that. Actually, I'm quite happy to find the channel active once again, or, more correctly, to realize I had unsubscribed from the channel because of a 2 month lack of videos. So, yeah, great to be back watching your videos .Also, I did finish watching the video and read the comments you made - which, by the way, is always great to see how you interact with us viewers when you can - before writing this; I'm not that much of asshole. That said, I couldn't help but, already from the start of the video, to find myself pondering how much of a "estadounidense" message this is all sounded and having my cinic funnybone tickled. To make it clearer, by "estadounidense" message I don't necessarily mean this is pertinent only to the US system and those that are similar to it, but how this stance seems permeated by this defence of the burgeois democracy, even if due to the lack of a better viable option. Of course this is not something limited to, or even necessarily origining from, the US, but is usually associated with it from where I'm from (conceding, though, more amongst those with certain political positionings). Some have already expressed here in the comments section criticisms regarding gerrymandering and minorities, and in a way, at least indirectly, towards the representativity of the system; I can certainly sympathize with that sentiment, even if perhaps not fully agreeing with how it was expressed. As someone born and raised in Latin America, and inevitably at least somewhat familiarized with political instability, who has political positionings which would probably be characterized as left or far-left by most, as a whole the video, whose call to action is most certainly legitimate, sadly seems just too accepting of this legitimacy and efficiency of the burgeois republic and its proclaimeed representativity. By no means I mean to offend, nor do I intend to profoundly criticize you with any of this. Just a sincere reaction and short thoughts on the video and I'd definitely be more than happy to hear from you, if you feel the desire to answer my comment. Now back to catching up with the rest of your videos.

Great video! Maybe it was getting off topic, but I'd add that if you have an adversarial relationship with a representative that is going nowhere then it is time to start investigating who his challengers will be in the next election. If you get in on the ground floor trying to help get someone elected you can have an even stronger voice in that it is much more likely you'll get to meet the candidate and, if they get elected, you would hopefully be noticed when you express your opinion on an issue down the road.

Thank you, This seems to be an idea that conservatives understand much better than liberals, at least where I live, and its nice to see a liberal not just falling back on the excuse of "they just wont listen" to excuse laziness. I have done this and it has worked, so I hate to hear that excuse. One thing to point out as well, is that your representative my already want the same thing you do, but they are being block by the rest of the council, or the Governor or whoever. So not only can your contact keep them pushing for what you want but if you don't have a group already they, or more likely their staff, may be able to point you towards one, and tell you who you need to put more pressure on.

I don't think contacting representatives will be an effective solution to the elephant in the room. Contacting representatives is an effective way to deal with so-called "democratic deficits", where representatives don't vote in accordance with the desires of their constituents, either because they're unaware of their constituents' position on the issue (e.g. low-profile issues like mental health) or because they do, but think that they can get away with running counter to it without provoking a backlash (e.g. Obama campaigning on closing Guantanamo, then not doing it after he got into office). Unfortunately, neither of these is the case. Donald Trump being president wasn't the result of some undemocratic process, it was the result of electoral college delegates fulfilling precisely the will of their constituents. No matter what you think of Donald Trump, his election was democratic, and as long as people vote Trump, there's not much you can do to stop him.

As a Destiny viewer i would be very interested in him viewing this video, he talks alot about being effective in your politics so i think he could agree with alot of these points.

This video is so cute! A grown up man still thinks "representatives" give a fuck.

The country is made up of 50 semi autonomous states that each need proper representation and have direct democratic elections within each state to award that influence. The electoral college system makes perfect sense and worked as intended last year. It is not an obsolete holdover for some antiquated problem like mass physical ballot delivery. There is nothing to dispute.

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This guy seems to be very left leaning... Never the less still good information