Hi kids, it’s me again. You know, that lady who’s always writing about weird things happening to her in truck stop bathrooms, and telling you to stay hydrated and have a good attitude. I’ve also been know to encourage people to take part in their government, since the entire premise of it is, “By the People, for the People,” and it doesn’t work right unless everyone does their part.
I’m not going to be redundant with my constant nagging about standing up for yourself and paying attention to what’s going on in your government, but I am going to give you some inside information that might encourage you a little to do so more often.
“Involvement doesn’t stop at the voting booth, we must stay involved so they know what we want and that we are watching. I encourage everyone to research how a bill becomes a law in their state. Most legislatures have websites where you can follow bills/topics you are interested in. They make it easy — you can set up alerts. Most of them have toll free hot lines. You can call and ask the message be sent to several members at once. I can’t speak for all reps, … but the ones I worked for and worked around, we responded to every single call. We had different methods of doing it (as we got thousands of calls, letters, etc.) but we did respond to let them know their voice was heard. The Reps I worked for would call from the floor before they took an important vote and see what constituents were saying. It did influence their vote.”
Jim Johnston, President of OOIDA, told me almost the exact same thing the first time we met him. I’m reiterating it here because I hear so many people say, “You can’t change things, no one listens, I’m just going to complain on Facebook and waste valuable time I could be calling my Representative with and eat worms.”
Y’all go on and eat them worms, but while you’re eating them think about what Aunt Michelle has to say about this:
“Having worked in politics for many years I understand how it works. The political process does allow for people to participate. Every bill that passes our state legislature has two hearings. They are public hearings and the public is allowed to testify…. Guess who uses that system? The big corporations. They use lobbyists to represent their interests. If we as individuals want to make a difference, then use the process we are given and get involved in it.”
You’ll eat them worms, and you’ll like ’em, if big business has anything to say about it. They’re happy as hell you’re eating worms and crying on Facebook; less traffic to get to the hearings and dictate their will.
There are three ways to motivate people: you can either inspire them, scare them, or make them angry, and if what you just read about how our system is used doesn’t do at least one for you, you might want to go on back to the mothership and have your human program re-booted.
When you read about a crazy law or insane way our taxes are being spent, or not spent, or more importantly, who is actually paying them and not paying them, and you ask yourself, “How does this happen?” … Well, now you know.
There are more than three million people in this industry, with common goals and obstacles in front of those goals. It is very much in our favor to push back, stand up, and be heard. Can you imagine if we got just one tenth of that number to call their representative once a week? What kind of impact would that have?
Do it. Use your power. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of eating worms.
