Today some of the high-traffic blogs are asking their readers to contact Rep. Steny Hoyer because Hoyer is seeking a compromise on continued funding of the Iraq war. This post will confine itself to the strategy employed.
Steny Hoyer represents a suburban Maryland district. Unless you live in his district, you are not going to have a great deal of influence. In this case AIPAC would have contacted their supporters who live in Hoyer’s district, and asked them to contact Hoyer. If we had a sophisticated antiwar lobby that is what we would be doing. But no, we just have high traffic blog exhorting their readers to contact Hoyer and then are so surprised to learn you have to have a zip code from Hoyer’s district to use his congressional web contact form. Surprise Surprise.
How would a clueful blogger have handled this? Why not send an email to all of the local Maryland blogs and asked if they wanted to do a joint project. Some of their readers are likely to reside in Maryland and would have some pull.
If we want to win we need to pack away some of our self-righteousness and start to think strategically.
Speaking just on processes – I think your idea is a much more effective way of going about things. Aggregator sites like Lefty Blogs or even Blog Net News are a great way of finding out what’s being written locally – and providing a starting point for building contacts with bloggers who can get the word out to constituents.
Thank you for your kind words. You are abosolutely right about BlogNetNews, which has a search feature which is perfect for situations such as this.
As much as we talk about being a movement, we don’t always act like one.
When I want to contact a congressperson, I use the address & phone of a hotel in her district as mine.
Tricky-tricky. Are you sure you weren’t a Republican once?
Nice touch. 🙂
it can put in you the spam filter for future communication.
there is no subsitute for support within a district. It is not as if there weren’t active peace groups within that district.
were a high traffic blog suggest to a local blog that if the local blog wants to take this on the high traffic blog would link to them and suggest readers go through the local blog that would be a good incentive for the local blog to take on the project.
but that would you know, involve giving up some of the glory and gasp, power, that is kind of hard for human nature