Contact Your Elected Officials

"All the darkness of the world cannot extinguish the light of one small candle."

Tips on writing to, speaking with, and contacting our elected officials

Although email and online petitions make it very convenient to contact elected officals, typed and printed letters communicate your committment and personal connection. Write to your representatives and explain your concerns.

• How to Write Your Congressman
• Tools for Citizens

Phone and fax numbers, snail mail and email addresses.

• Senate & Congress
• Senate
• Congress Merge
• Congress

Vital resources for researching voting records, biographies, financing, issue positions and more.

• Office of the Clerk
• Project Vote Smart
• People for the American Way
• OpenSecrets.org

Groups, Actions and Organizers

Online petitions and links to groups and organizations for activists.

• World PROUT Assembly: What Can We Do
• Democratic Parties 50 State Strategy
• Grassroots Tools from CivilRights.org!
• Senator Barbara Boxer: Issues & Petitions
• Citizens for Legitimate Government
• Take to the Streets
• The Democracy Cell Project
• pfaw.org Action Center
• Operation Democracy
• Greenpeace Actions
• Not in Our Name
• Impeach Central
• Media Channel
• Start Change
• AAUW

The Nation: Act Now!

• Demand Question Time - My boss Katrina vanden Heuvel recently detailed the merits of a new campaign that could enhance civic engagement, make politicians more accountable and promote the notion that our elected reps should be able to talk lucidly about the issues of the day. The idea of "Demand Question Time" came in the wake of the unprecedented live, televised question-and-answer session on January 29 between President Obama and the House Republican leadership. Since then, people of all political persuasions have been endorsing the value of what's being called "Question Time" -- from the editor of 'The Nation' to the leader of the Cincinnati Tea Party! Use the form below to add your name to the call for the President and Congress to implement a regular schedule of public Question Time sessions. Read More ...
• Last Flight to Abu Dhabi - Billy Bragg, a living legend of the British punk and folk music scenes, just released a new song as catchy and relevant as anything he's produced in many years. Debuted two nights ago at a Haiti benefit concert in London, 'Last Flight to Abu Dhabi' takes to task "the bankers who caused the crash." The opening verse: "Johnny was a banker, he made a lot of cash Betting on derivatives, he helped to cause the crash Now that everybody wants to limit his income Jonty's packed his bags and he's going on the run" And, as I said, the tune is real catchy. Read More ...
• Protests in Iran - This post was written by Chantal Flores, a Nation intern and freelance writer living in New York City.' A week after the contested June 2009 presidential election, the image of blood covering the face of 27-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan dead in a street in Tehran became the symbol of the Iranian people's struggle for freedom. What seemed at first an isolated demonstration against a rigged election, eventually turned into the largest uprising against the Islamic Republic since its inception in 1979. Read More ...
• Free Speech for People - My colleague and friend John Nichols' new post appropriately lauds Rep. Donna Edwards' proposed legislation to redress the damage done by the Supreme Court in its decision in the case of Citizens United v. FEC to abandon long-standing precedent with the purpose of permitting corporations to dominate the political discourse. As 'The Nation' editorialized recently: "The clearest and boldest counter to the Court's ruling is a constitutional amendment stating unequivocally that corporations are not people and do not have the right to buy elections." The first article of Edwards' proposed bill says it all: "The sovereign right of the people to govern being essential to a free democracy, Congress and the States may regulate the expenditure of funds for political speech by any corporation, limited liability company, or other corporate entity." Read More ...
• Goodbye Howard Zinn - Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and the author of the seminal 'A People's History of the United States', died today at the age of 87 of a heart attack in Santa Monica, California. He was in a swimming pool doing laps and was spotted immediately by lifeguards but died instantly. Zinn's brand of history put common citizens at the center of the story and inspired generations of young activists and academics to remember that change is possible. As he wrote in his autobiography, 'You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train' (1994), "From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble." Watch these videos to get a sense of what we've lost. Read More ...

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The Nation: Alerts

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