Getting Your Voice Heard as an Ordinary Person Living in a Plutocracy
By: Julie Hotard
Tags: Plutocracy, Activism, Senate, Kamala Harris, House Of Representatives

I just sent a message with a request to someone who follows me on Twitter. I’d like to make that same request of everyone who reads my work on Medium. Here it is.

If you think the information in one of my essays, such as The Vast Reach of Right Wing Disinformation

contains essential information for government officials to be aware of, please handwrite a few sentences to your representative about why you see this info as important. Please then print out the article, then attach your handwritten note as the first page and snail mail the whole letter to our Democratic leaders and to your own Reps and Senators — if they’re Dems. Republicans get power through disinformation, so they are likely grateful for it. So it would likely be a waste to send it to Republicans.

However, no matter what state you live in, you can send such a letter to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Steny Hoyer, Senator (VP-Elect) Kamala Harris and other Dem leaders who represent all of us.

Dem voters with GOP Senators and Reps need to look to Pelosi, Schumer, Hoyer, and Harris to represent you. You must depend on those Dem leaders need to figure out how to campaign to turn your area Blue in next election. If you have ideas on how, then send them to those people and/or to whoever is doing GOTV for Dems in your area. Be aware THOSE are your Reps to communicate with. Because you didn’t vote for the GOP & you don’t want what they’re doing.

Maybe you don’t think my essay contains the information that’s most important for government officials to hear. If so, please handwrite your own summary of the info you find important, and attach an article by whoever has written well about these issues, if there is one.

This will take some time and effort. I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t want to do it. Here is why I request this. Snail mail gets attention that tweeting does not. In a plutocracy, there are not enough channels where representatives can clearly hear ordinary people communicate what’s important to them.

Handwritten snail mail sent to Senators or Representatives is one of the rare effective channels — at least for now. Currently this channel isn’t used much. So a person doesn’t get caught in the huge traffic jam we find in other channels — for example in tweets to Representatives.

Tweeting is easy. Lots of people do it, leading to huge traffic jams. I see voters send tweets to leaders all the time. I don’t remember ever seeing a response to any of those tweets. People with large twitter accounts may not read tweets sent to them at all. In fact, many famous people appear to be using Twitter as a one-way broadcasting system. Some of them have admitted they do this — often because they prefer to avoid the large number of insults from trolls in the responses.

Of course, I myself am going to send a handwritten snail mail letter with my essay printed out. I’ve often emailed leaders with a link to an article, and sometimes snail mail written them. But I haven’t yet done it with the Right Wing Disinformation article. So it’s time.

Thanks to everyone who is using their time and energy to do this — including those who select someone else’s article or simply write a snail mail letter of your own to your representatives. Our democracy is stronger when citizens let government officials know what we want from them. Complaining to each other can be good for venting. But our officials never know what we want unless we tell them.