Daily Engagement is a new, brief, daily feature on Flavorwire meant to help people feel somewhat less helpless and hopeless (or at least in control of their helplessness and hopelessness) in the midst of a political news cycle that’s been doling out affronts to human decency on the daily.
Every day, we’ll post one easy thing that people can do to continue to resist the current state of politics under the Trump administration, focusing on the creative ways (we are a culture website after all) that citizens are finding to resist.
Today, we want to aim our focus towards 5 Calls, one of many brand-new activist websites that makes it far less daunting to dial up members of Congress and other Washingtonians. So today’s “thing to do” actually could be five “things to do,” because the emphasis of the website is that making 5 calls takes approximately 5 minutes. The site was created by a group of volunteers who stress the importance of “making advocacy accessible.”
If you not only feel generally paralyzed by the act of making a phone call, but also by extemporizing about politics, the website provides a script for each issue. Once you enter your zip code, it gives you a more specific set of issues and representatives to get in touch with. Each “call” to each particular person comes accompanied with a reason — which, is also helpful, given the barrage of information that makes us paralyzed in the first place. This way, we can keep track exactly of who’s in charge of what, or power is of the people you’re calling have, and what they can actually impact.
In New York today, for example, there are calls you can make to voice your concerns over Trump’s executive orders surrounding immigrants and refugees, or his executive actions of advanced approval for DAPL, or over repealing ACA (see what we mean about barrage?).
In the coming days, we’ll focus this feature on a more specific issue, but for this, erm, inaugural post, the specific issue is the increased ease with which you can exert your right as a constituent. Call away.