On the need for political activism

I’ll never forget the day I saw democracy at work. It was June 26, 2009 — Michael Jackson had just died and the House of Representatives was voting on a massive climate and energy bill. I was working for 1Sky — a campaign devoted to the very principles that the bill embodied: reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, clean energy, energy efficiency, green collar jobs and increasing the sustainability of transportation.

My job at 1Sky was mostly political analysis: Waxman-Markey, as the bill was commonly called, was more than 1,000 pages long and almost entirely incomprehensible. Staffers from congressional offices would call us to ask about a particular section of the legislation and how it was going to affect their constituents. We would do the appropriate research and brief them.

On June 26 — the day of the floor vote in the House — we got a slightly unusual call from a Capitol Hill staffer. Representative Sanford Bishop (D–Ga.) was taking hundreds of calls an hour regarding the climate bill and we were being encouraged to sway his vote with our own pro-climate supporters. The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Environment America and other green groups were turning out their members from his district in swarms, as was the radical right who oppose the legislation on moral, economic and social grounds.

An informant told us that Rep. Bishop had received so many calls on either side of the aisle — both supporting and opposing the bill — that he was going to tally the day’s calls and vote according to whatever opinion had the more calls. The 1Sky CEO immediately got on the speakerphone and told the entire office to start calling 1Sky followers in the Georgia 2nd district to make sure they had called the Congressman and voiced their support for Waxman-Markey.

In the end, the Congressman filed a yes vote on this landmark legislation because the resounding call from Georgia’s 2nd at the end of the day was for a stable climate and a clean energy economy. And while the bill eventually died in the Senate, it was an eye-opening experience as to what democracy could look like, were political activity a cultural norm. I cannot count how many times in my life I have heard people question the validity of calling or writing to their Congressman — for liberals, it has always seemed like angry callers from the right would drown their efforts out.

But here was an example of the opposite; here was a legitimate democratic exercise — albeit in the concentrated span of a few hours. The experience made me seriously wonder — how many times before have Congressman had to make a decision based entirely off of constituent sentiment? How many opportunities have we potentially missed out on to pass progressive education, environmental, or social reform because political apathy is at its highest level? How many times have we fallen prey to the paradigm that elected representatives care more about their campaign contributors than their constituents?

The lesson, I guess, is be politically active. Have your Congressman and your Senators’ phone numbers programmed into your phone, and when the DREAM Act is up for the zillionth time, or health care reform hangs dangerously in the balance, give them a call and tell them what you really feel and believe. You never know how confused they might be about how you feel.