https://twitter.com/coff33detective/status/1271463582312673281
“make yourselves impossible to ignore. 10,000 signatures on twitter is a lot but 10 unique personal emails is enough to derail an entire council session.”
I was in a city council meeting last week about defunding the police and one of the council members mentioned multiple times that she’d been inundated with calls and emails all that day saying to defund the police.
[ID: Two screenshots of a twitter thread by alex flanigan, anti-fascist @Coff33Detective from June 12, 2020 beginning at 11:25 AM that reads: hi! i work in local government and community management, and i’m here to tell you a secret: it is like, really, really easy to overwhelm the people who work in your local government. especially right now. especially on things they can actionably do or impact.
you may not know this, but i bet your city or town or municipality has a website. i bet that website has some contact forms or email addresses on it. i bet you can use them to put together a message in about 5 minutes! i bet it’s almost as easy as signing a national petition.
which is to say: i’m noticing, like most other people, that the national level discussion on really important and long overdue issues is flagging. but the internet and news cycle is not the only battleground, and you will be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to—
—fight those battles at home, on your own turf, with much more immediate impact, and they are so, so important.
I am begging you: make my job, and the jobs of people like me, difficult right now. flood us with demands. make yourselves impossible to ignore. 10,000 signatures on twitter is a lot but 10 unique personal emails is enough to derail an entire council session. End ID]
I’ve been a city council observer with the League of Women Voters for nearly a year, and I have witnessed the following:
- A few guys voicing their anxiety about speeding on a street where their children play and suggesting a radar speed sign. Despite catching all of two meetings where this was mentioned, I walked back home one day and–yep–there was a radar speed sign up.
- A persistent force of 3-5ish loud residents coming to zoning and council meetings because they did not want a drive through style restaurant moving into a particular area where there were already major issues with traffic congestion and safety. This eventually resulted in a Chik-fil-a having its planning proposal shot down by council such that the lot is now likely to house an Aldi. I am getting low cost groceries instead of bigotry chicken in my neighborhood because of a D&D party’s worth of regular speakers.
- A turnout of residents shouting down an attempt to reduce the amount of funding for the community Juneteenth celebration until Council backed down. One meeting. Roughly a dozen people + their kids speaking about the significance of the holiday. The celebration ended up having its full funding restored.
In my experience, it is incredibly easy to bully local politicians and get some sort of results, especially in small municipalities. If you have something that you want to see happen at the local level, seriously try to contact your local officials and see what you can make happen.
I single-handedly got them to double the number of chickens you are allowed to keep in my former town.
You genuinely don’t even always have to go to a meeting btw. If you have a Facebook, those council members are in your local Facebook groups.Do you know how easy it is to tag your mayor and go “hey what are you gonna do about this?” over everything? Do you know how often that WORKS?
Pay attention to this.
Government From Above looks easy. Command your followers to do shit and they do it, right?
Except when they don’t. Because all of a sudden their neighbors get in their faces.
Then the whole thing comes apart.
It’s easy for people to think Their Boy and their way of thinking has won, beating the Evil Other Side. They think they can then go back to arguing with their HOA and worrying about the price of eggs.
Teach them otherwise!
Turn up at local political meetings and have those people understand that you’re not just going to roll over and let them have their way. Yell at them. (In words bigger than they were equipped to understand, if you feel that’s the way to go.) Give them to understand that they are not right, and you will be back again to get up their ill-prepared noses about this. And again. And again. (Because they’ll never really be ready for opposition. No one’s taught them that. They’re just cannon fodder, poor things. They were never meant to go into battle.)
People hate looking stupid repeatedly in front of other people. You can tire them out. You can make them give up. You can make them feel there’s no point in it.
Don’t talk yourself out of this. The Goddess of Justice must descend from great heights to effect herself into the works of human beings. Don’t talk yourself out of “your turn in the barrel.” (As some humans have been known to call it.) It won’t last that long. Almost none of your opponents have any staying power. (Remember Punched-in-The-Face-Nazi guy? He had a huge online presence. It took one punch to make him dig a hole and crawl in.)
Let the folks you’re opposing understand that you’re going to keep on doing this every time they show up. Let them get the sense that you’re willing to be unreasonable about this. They’ve been thinking they’re the “sane” ones in this discourse. Teach them that they may possibly be incorrect.
Be persistent. Some of them will never have seen persistence in their lives. (As opposed to repeating somebody else’s talking points over and over again, which isn’t the same thing at all.) True persistence requires creativity! Every day, make a new way to come at them. They will never be able to keep up with you.
If enough of us do this… we can take whole legislative structures back: from the bottom up.
Just from being annoying. 🙂
amhrancas 