List of 61 senators refusing to meet and discuss PIPA/SOPA | Hacker News Reader

List of 61 senators refusing to meet and discuss PIPA/SOPA

reddit.com

213 pointsnextparadigms20 comments

I think the top comment on Reddit deserves a re-post here:

"As a former Senate staffer and redditor, I will tell you that the most effective course of action in this situation is to call the DC offices of only your own Senators directly. Speak to the staff assistant, who will take down your comments and log them into a tracking system. Make it clear to the staffer that you are calling in opposition to SOPA. In the briefing prior to the vote, the staffer assigned to SOPA will inform the Senator of the aggregate constituent sentiment as reflected by phone calls and letters. Their vote recommendation will be, in part, based on constituent sentiment. Most senators will make up their minds based on the information provided to them by their briefing staff.

The more phone calls this issue receives, the clearer constituent sentiment will be to these Senators. Take the time to call a few times a day if possible. This is by far the best way to make an impact. In person meetings will have the same result"

Take action people.

As a Democratic political consultant who lived and worked in DC for years and has many friends who work on the Hill, I will tell you that this is exactly right.

Lobbyists do the same thing (target the staff), they just do it over coffee, lunch, drinks and/or briefing materials on a desk. 20- & 30-somethings run most of DC.

It's also worth noting that paper and phone calls are a lot more hassle than email. All those 'email your councillor/senator/mayor/whatever' campaigns are ineffective because the people who take the time to call or mail in a letter are likely to be 10 times more pissed off (and express it) than those that simply email.

Also, remember. Paper builds up. If you've got friends who oppose the bill then get them to write at the same time. Get a stack of letters and mail them together.

Emails can be deleted, and phone calls can be ignored. 100 letters being dropped off by the mail man, that's gonna be a problem.

Thanks to the anthrax scare a while back, mail takes forever to get to senators/reps these days. I think a phone call is more effective at this point.

Actually, PIPA is the Senate bill. It should probably be mentioned explicitly.

> Their vote recommendation will be, in part, based on constituent sentiment. Most senators will make up their minds based on the information provided to them by their briefing staff.

I'm probably just being overly cynical, but I'm truly dubious of this claim. Sure, I suspect it's a data point, but I wonder how much influence this has over corporate and industry lobbying and money.

I think this pertinent and will make it even easier to make the call

http://engineadvocacy.com/voice/

Thanks for this clear information. I plan on calling the senator representing my state tomorrow.

I just called my senators in CA and was kind of shocked to get a real person. Of course, they didn't patch me through to the Senator but hopefully they are getting bombarded by anti PIPA calls and can relay this to their bosses.

So have a quick blurb ready to convey to a real person. I'm sure they are overwhelmed juggling calls. Also, be polite. Being rude undermines the effort.

I'm in California. Here are the numbers of our two senators:

Boxer: tel:1-202-224-3553p3

Feinstein: tel:1-202-224-3841

("p" is pause)

Please call, and call often.

This has probably been asked in many of the other SOPA threads, but what can someone from outside of the States do?

I mean it sounds like the senators are not going to want to hear from someone living in Sweden, but SOPA potentially effects the whole world

There's social networking for one thing if you have friends in the US. A FB link to a blog post might be effective, especially since a certain segment of Americans are very sensitive to foreign opinion.

If you're up for a larger time commitment you could help with research and improving anti-SOPA websites.

Come to think of it, there really should be an "Anti-SOPA activities for people outside the US" list, but I don't know of one. Researching that and posting it might not be a bad way to contribute:)

Not as good as a call, but here are links to their Facebook pages (most have public posts enabled):

[moved to its own thread] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3458653

Does anyone know how a FB comment compares to a phone call in effectiveness/time commitment? Is it something worth doing after at all, or maybe just after you've made all the calls you feel are reasonable? I really need to find a guide that covers this sort of thing.

Honestly, it does next to nothing. It's probably better than literally nothing, but if you can spare the 2 minutes to make a phone call, it's a much better use of your time.

I posted this a while back:

>Congress uses multipliers to figure out how predictive each piece of communication is (ie, how likely it is that a certain piece of communication will result in a change in voting behavior).

> I don't remember the exact numbers, but the hierarchy goes (in descending order): in-person visit to DC office, in-person visit to local office, physical handwritten letter, physical typed letter, phone call, email. The multiplier attached to email is close to zero. (The exact method varies by congressman/senator, but the relative rankings are the same throughout).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3264561

Perfect. Thanks very much.

Aren't Senators fairly good at detecting people spam? I wonder if it actually productive to have a bunch of people who don't understand the bill or its risks and/or benefits showing up to just regurgitate what they read on the internet.

Wouldn't it be better to have a small number of people who ACTUALLY understand the bill go and offer independent arguments?

I know if I were in a decision making position the latter would impress me a lot more than the former.

I wonder if it actually productive to have a bunch of people who don't understand the bill or its risks and/or benefits showing up to just regurgitate what they read on the internet.

senators and congresspersons probably don't understand many of the bills they vote on, either.

do you really think most of those lawmakers suddenly decided that copyright infringement was a problem and banded together to create SOPA and PIPA on their own? organizations lobbied them to form an opinion. if nobody challenges those opinions, they just vote how the money tells them to.

if enough constituents tell them to change their opinion, they probably will. not because they really care personally, but because it will look favorable to the people that are in charge of reelecting them, and that will allow them to continue getting money from lobbyists over issues like SOPA and PIPA.

godaddy was in favor of SOPA for whatever reason, and only when they started losing money from it did they suddenly reverse their position and come out against it. lawmakers will do the same exact thing for the same exact reason if enough people call them about it.

This.

I worked in DC at a PAC for 3 years, and I can confirm that, without a doubt, lawmakers in Washington vote where either a) the money leads or b) the most ruckus gets stirred up, at least 90% of the time. Every congressperson has their pet causes (the other 10%) but for the rest, they're voting in large part based on those two factors. How could they not? There's simply too much going on to really learn about every issue that comes across their desk.

The ruckus matters.

Because senators want to get reelected, volume is incredibly important. I do hope that the less knowledgeable yield to the more knowledgeable if senators do grant meetings.

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