I've been thinking a lot lately about how everyday citizens can effectively influence policymakers and the laws they create. It feels like a huge and often opaque process, and I'm wondering what practical strategies actually work beyond just voting in elections.
* You can go bottom-up or top-down. Some theories of change and some movements focus on developing a critical mass of grassroots/voter/public support to make change happen; others focus on getting the technical/specific policy right and then finding (or creating) the political window for adoption. Sometimes, that takes months; other times, it takes decades. A good read on this concept would be anything walking you through the Overton Window.
* It's hard to overestimate the value of in-person, informed conversations, particularly if you're talking to local or state officials. Show up at the right time (i.e., not the morning something's being voted on) with factual considerations/arguments that aren't outside the law or what's possible. A local example of how not to do it: Showing up at the planning commission to bitch about a new project affecting your view (for example) when the city doesn't have anything on the books about protecting views.
* No politician anywhere ran on doing nothing -- if your proposed solution to something is to do nothing, you're pushing a big rock up a big hill. Better to recommend things that allow politicians to feel like they're taking action.
It is kind of huge, though. Each individual government entity is not too big in and of itself (aside from the federal gov), but there are just so many governmental entities that it figuring out who controls what can be a lot of effort. Read through existing policies, ordinances, and other legislation to try to get a sense of that. And take a look at citations when you do so - especially when looking at policies, there will be cross-references to navigate through it all, sometimes including citations to laws that the policy implements.
Once you know how it all works, you will at least know how to engage with your local government and be part of the discussion. Actually convincing them to act in the direction you desire is another story, but step one is just learning how it all works.
I got recruited to organize a "Nurses for Single Payer" campaign (I was the web person, I'm not a Nurse.)
When it was two of us, our congress-critter wouldn't return our phone calls. When it was 10, they still didn't return our phone calls because we didn't know we were supposed to put our membership numbers on the web-site. When we were about 50 and realized we should put something like "representing over 50 nurses in our geographic area" we got a call back and when we had 100 real members, we got a sit-down meeting with a staffer. At about 125 members we got a meeting with our congress-critter.
YMMV, but if you can get at least 100 people to sign a petition or agree to be counted in some form of official membership list, that seems to be about where policy-makers start responding to you. I am willing to bet you have to have a lot more to truly "influence" policy, but it's a good start.
Some of my take aways.
* Find your friends and allies on an issue. Got broad agreement on something with your community, adjacent communities, bystanders, and your enemies too! Have lots of meetings, go to other groups meetings. Get meetings with elected officials with your allies. I’d say six people is the sweet spot. Represent as much diversity in those people as possible young/old, rich/poor, etc etc.
* Come to the table with solutions. If you’re seeking the vote of someone for something already in the pipeline, that’s an easier ask than say getting them to introduce legislation. If you need to introduce something, best to adapt similar legislation/ordinances in place someplace else. The more track record a policy has, the better.
* Try to make change as local as possible. You’re much more likely to get meetings with city council members and county supervisors than you are with federal policy makers.
* Build relationships with staff! A lot of elected officials are focused on the connection to constituents, they’re not focused on policy, the staff make things happen, policy advisors are in a pivotal role to advocate. Getting staff on your side is almost required to get policy moving.
* If someone is already doing something, it’s easier to plug in and support their work rather than to duplicate effort. To that end, if you’re looking at advocating on tech issues, my suggestion would be to check out I Am The Calvary [1], which is grassroots public policy advocacy org that grew out of DEFCON.
At the state and local level, you can get engaged, but you need for forge relationships to be effective. That means time and some amount of money.
I have a few state people whom I can talk to easily, mostly through people I know who lobby for a living. I don’t have the time to nurture a direct relationship. Relationships mean you speak or text a few times a month, meet up a few times a year. 3/4 times you should not talk business. Lobbyists are easier than politicians unless your interests align tightly. People in politics crave friends.
If that sounds awful - that’s ok. Joining an advocacy organization and contributing that way is important and less time consuming.
You don't. You either need to know someone at the top, or organization a collective. It's tough to get meetings with reps at the state level or higher as an individual. Emails, calls, letters, etc are answered by other people and usually are just a canned response, sometimes they're even about the correct topic (I've had them send canned responses that were only tangentially related at best).
The fact is, the politicians represent too many people to give even the small percentage of engaged constituents any real attention.
Moreover, I haven’t tried it so I can’t say it works, but talk to and befriend local activists and politicians. These people know more about the “opaque process”, and maybe by hanging out with them you’ll meet those at the state level and so on.
Someone from the inside would know more, but from the outside it seems that a lot of politics is networking and who you know.