Day 2 I tried to dress a little bit more professionally and as I entered the state building I had to walk through the security gates. I forgot that I had a pocket knife in my bag, and that held me up because the security officer had to take it from me to get back later. I went up to the 22nd floor of the building and began to do some more work. I did some more constituent data input, and I did some filing for the office. For some reason everybody seemed frantic but things were moving really slowly, so they had me sitting on the floor figuring out where to put files. Then when the assembly member was coming into the office the secretary told me that I needed to get off of the ground because it wouldn't look too good to see me sitting on the ground. So I got up, finished and left for the day.
After reading the constituent letters and emails that were sent to the office I began to realize the little amount of people that actually know whats going on. I didn't know about all of these bills being passed or the props or anything at all! After reading there letters I saw that the governor of california wants to cut family planning costs, and I didnt even know that. So many people would be affected by those cuts but I only saw about 20 letters from people who opposed the cuts. I realized that people don't have this knowledge available to them, it needs to be put out more.
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bringing a knife into a federal building? nice move lol
ReplyDeleteJudging from what you have observed during your time working there and the constituent work that you have done, is writing letters more effective than calling when trying to persuade representatives in decision making? Or, is either effective?
It seems like calling repesentatives is ineffective since the calls are answered by staffers and not the representatives themselves. Perhaps calling would be practical if there were a considerable amount of calls made, from many diferent people, about a particular issue. But even then it seems like writing would still be more efficient in larger numbers than a profusion of calls because 1) paper trails are reminders to the office of how the constituents feel 2) depending on the office policy, letters are actually read by the main repesentative and not just a staffer 3) when a constituent speaks to a staffer on the phone the constituent runs the risk of having his/her point later forgoten or dismissed. Not all call may be logged.