Are you angry at President Trump? His administration? Congress? Have you done any of the following as a way to individually or collectively defend the U.S. Constitution:
- joined others in protesting by going to rallies or marching through the streets,
- signed online petitions,
- joined organizations that lobby on your behalf to protest what is happening in the United States?
Many people are defending the Constitution by organizing or attending rallies and marches to attack President Trump and his administration, while others show their disdain by signing petitions or joining local, state or national organizations to do the same. Want in on a little secret?
According to The Future of Citizen Engagement: Rebuilding the Democratic Dialogue by Kathy Goldschmidt and Bradly Joseph Sinkaus and published by the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF), those are among the least effective things you can do to actually create political change. My takeaway and experience is that while protests, petitions, and joining organizations are great ways to raise public awareness, build coalitions and movements, energize yourself with like-minded people, and express your anger, they usually fail to create the wanted political change unless additional strategies are used.
Problems with Protests and Other Civic Engagements
According to Goldschmidt and Sinkaus’s report, the civic engagements listed above are the most common ways advocates push for changes in public policy. One problem is that they are purely transactional. They are “mostly viewed as ‘one and done’ engagements. Once [people] participate in them, most disengage until they are prompted, often by anger, to perform the next transaction. Few follow up, and fewer still participate in the more sustained and deliberative democratic engagement that leads to change [italics added].
So what ways are more effective? Goldschmidt and Sinkaus used the figure shown below to list the top 10 most effective ways according to a survey of congressional office staff who work on policy.
Notice the top two most effective strategies are done by constituents or by representatives of constituents and that the top eight can also be done by constituents. I know from personal experience that local editorial boards (strategy number five) sometimes publish editorials based on information presented by constituents. Also notice that a visit from a lobbyist is number 9 on the list. Most people believe professional lobbyists or financial donors are the primary influencers (more on donors in a moment). The thing to remember about professional lobbyists is that they rarely live in the districts or states of the Members of Congress (MoC) they are lobbying. It’s the voters in the district or state that decide whether the MoC keeps their seat in Congress. Last in the list is the form email message. It’s quick and easy to do and probably carries more weight if it comes from a constituent.
Regarding the influence of donors on MoC, another report from CMF called Citizen-Centric Advocacy: The Untapped Power of Constituent Engagement by Bradford Fitch, Kathy Goldschmidt, and Nicole Folk Cooper state “the relationship [between MoCs and donors] is best characterized by one House Chief of Staff’s views, expressed during a focus group. We asked: ‘Who has more influence: someone who gives $1,000 to your campaign or someone who speaks at a town hall meeting?’ The Chief of Staff replied (and others nodded in agreement), ‘That depends on who makes the best argument. We listen to both of them.’ This suggests that while legislators listen to campaign contributors, they are not the only people who have the ear of Congress.”
Even when people do use one or more of the strategies shown above, there’s a second problem with how people lobby their MoCs through meetings, written messages, and telephone: they don’t do it well. Goldschmidt and Sinkaus asked congressional staffers what kind of information is helpful in policy making and how often do they get that information. Here’s what they found:
Clearly when people do communicate with congressional staff and MoCs, they aren’t providing the kind of information that would influence policy-makers decisions.
There’s a third problem to talk about. Whether you’re a citizen or not, everyone living in the United States has three people representing them in Congress. The first is their member in the House of Representatives, who represents them and every person living in the representative’s congressional district. The second and third are the senators who represent everyone living in their state. The problem here is that most people don’t know who their MoCs are and even fewer communicate with their MoCs.
Why am I writing about Congress and constituents so much? Because as I wrote in my last essay (We’ve Got a Class 5 Hurricane of Denial in Congress Right Now), the U.S. Constitution was bult on the idea that Congress would rein in abuses by the administration when it threatens to ignore the Constitution and usurp the rights and responsibilities given to the Legislative and Judicial branches of the federal government. When the Legislative branch refuses or is unable to rein in the administration, it’s up to the people of the United States to force Congress to take control from the administration. That cannot happen when people don’t even know who their representative and senators are.
How to Influence Congress to Defend the Constitution
There are only a handful of organizations that effectively train constituents to influence Congress. For over 30 years, I’ve been fortunate to volunteer with one: RESULTS. Since its beginning in 1980, RESULTS has focused on creating the political will to end poverty. What makes RESULTS special is that it creates and expands political will by helping people connect with their individual political power, gives them information, training, and support to build relationships with MoCs and staff, and focuses that political will to produce results that are reducing poverty. It’s why Representative Tony Hall (D-OH), said, “Pound for pound, RESULTS is the most effective lobby in Washington.”
Rep. Hall’s statement is echoed by others I’ve heard. A fellow RESULTS volunteer once told me she heard Carol Bellamy, a former Executive Director of UNICEF, publicly state at a conference that RESULTS has helped children around the world more than any other organization she knows. I’ve often called RESULTS a stealth organization because it doesn’t focus on getting its name known in the public and building a large number of members; it focuses on attracting and training people who want to create the political will to end hunger and poverty.
As a RESULTS volunteer, I was trained and supported to use nine of the top 10 advocacy strategies multiple times–I was never a paid lobbyist. I also learned how to provide the information congressional staff say they most want to receive. RESULTS also teaches people how to build relationships and influence MoCs regardless of which party the MoC is part of. That’s a critical element in working with Congress members. It’s okay to disagree. That’s inevitable in a functioning democratic republic. What RESULTS teaches, however, is to deepen relationships with MoCs, their staffs, editorial writers, and other volunteers; to share proposed solutions, i.e., policies and programs to end the political problem of poverty; and to encourage financial support for those solutions.
Here’s the thing to remember: RESULTS and similar training in how to build personal and collective political will can be used for any purpose. That training can be used to get a city council to install, or remove, a stop sign, and that training can scale up to build Congress’ will to defend the Constitution and the United States from an authoritarian takeover of a dying democratic republic.
That training often begins with a simple question: what is the name of your representative in Congress?
Between 1978 and 1979, Sam Daley-Harris, RESULTS’ founder, asked that question to 7,000 high school students. Only 200 knew the answer. Supposedly, the U. S. is governed as a democratic republic, i.e, democratic elections determine which candidates represent the people in the nation’s legislature. I wrote supposedly, because according to Ballotopedia, only 63.7% of eligible voters voted in 2024. I can only imagine far fewer have ever communicated with their representative and senators in Congress.
Since only constituents have the power to fire and hire their MoCs, politicians have to keep enough of their voting constituents not angry enough to fire them. Politicians always have a finger in the air–they have to know which way the political wind is blowing. It’s constituents that make that wind or, because of apathy or cynicism, leave a calm filled in by others, such as corporate or other special interest groups. That’s why RESULTS and the few other organizations that teach constituents how to effectively engage with Congress are so needed right now.
Another bit of training RESULTS volunteers get is how communicate information effectively by using a format called EPIC. That format can be used to organize information for a face-to-face meeting, a telephone call, a letter, or even an essay like this one. Here’s how to arrange information EPIC style:
- Engage = Get the person’s attention
- State the Problem(s) = Tell about the problem(s) you want something done about
- Inform = Tell about solution(s) to the problem(s)
- Call to action = Ask the person to do something specific to implement the solution
For more information about the EPIC, see this page from RESULT’s training page on the format.
Throughout its 45 years of existence, RESULTS has focused on hunger and poverty. In its own words, ” RESULTS is a movement of passionate, committed everyday people. We believe poverty is not inevitable, and that our voices have power. Together, we move lawmakers to build a more just and equitable world. We envision a world beyond poverty and the oppression that causes it.”
Summary (and call to action)
As an example, I’ve written this essay using the EPIC format. I’ve, hopefully, engaged your attention by asking whether you’re angry with President Trump and his administration and used specific, common civic engagement strategies (protests, petitions, and organizations that lobby on behalf of others) to voice that anger and defend the Constitution.
I wrote about the problem that those strategies are ineffective ways to influence MoC, and the least common strategies (constituents and others directly contacting politicians) are rarely used, and when they are used, don’t provide the information needed to influence MoCs.
I also informed you about what I strongly believe is the most effective solution to getting Congress to defend the Constitution: constituents lobbying their MoCs.
So, now it’s time for the all-important call to action. If you don’t know the name of your federal representative and senators, click this link and enter your address to learn their names and how to contact them. Then use the EPIC format in a meeting, letter, and/or phone call to ask them to resist President Trump and his administration’s attack on the Constitution. That resistance can take the form of congressional hearings, letters to and conversations with the president and administration staff, congressional sign-on letters, and legislative bills (and overrides) to hold the president and his administration accountable for their oaths to obey and defend the Constitution.