What’s an Action?

‘Actions’ is the term that describes activities citizens can undertake to communicate with legislators and policymakers on current issues. This is hardly a new concept: citizens have been making their views known to government officials for hundreds of years. In the Internet era, however, these communications activities can be organized into mass action taken by groups of people with shared interests, targeted at specific lawmakers. Messages can be refined to suit the needs of the moment, the schedules of government bodies and the voting record of individual politicians. Moreover, in a representative democracy, elected officials should want to be perceived as responsive to the communications of their constituents. Some actually are.

Technology–a two-edged sword

Of course, technology can also work against us. Just as there is information overload, there is such a thing as communications overload. If a million voters mail or e-mail form letters to a Congressperson, they will not be given the same attention as a million individually handwritten letters. So the fact that technology allows us to bombard our elected representatives with messages may also be what causes them to lose interest in the message. The secret to avoiding that is in how we do it.

How an Action Alert works

When Solar Nation issues an Action Alert, it’s usually to advise you of a development in Federal or State Government legislation that we feel:

a. Affects development or support of solar energy in the U.S.
b. Is critical enough to warrant sending messages to legislators urging their support or rejection

The Alert may not be sent to all solar citizens. For example, if it’s a State issue involving just a few representatives and, perhaps, the Governor, or if it’s a Federal issue for which we need to focus on the votes of a small number of Congresspersons, we may send the Alert only to constituents of those specific legislators. In this way, we’re neither overburdening our members nor wasting the time and goodwill of politicians whose votes on that particular issue wouldn’t be decisive.

When you read the Alert in your e-mail, you’ll get a summary of what the Call to Action is all about: what upcoming vote or pending bill is involved, why it’s important for the future of solar energy, etc. You can click through to the solar-nation.org site and find a fuller description of the needed Action, including, where appropriate, the full text of the impending bill (many solar citizens, quite reasonably, want to know everything about the legislation they’re supporting). Then you can decide whether to join in the Action.

Your part in the Action

What happens now depends on what kind of Action it is. If time is of the essence, we may be asking you to make a phone call to your Congressperson. If it’s not quite so urgent, an e-mail or even a letter might be more effective. And of course, we’ll provide you with talking points or suggested text containing the heart of the message. But here’s where the most vital part of the whole process comes in.

Getting their Attention

To get away from the ‘million form letters’ situation we described earlier, we will usually ask you to personalize your message to your Congressperson while keeping the core of it intact. This does not mean having to rewrite or reword the entire message, nor to insert a life story into it, but to add enough to make the message pertinent to your own experience or concerns on the subject.

In this way, the recipient will be receiving a unique message from someone who is well-informed about the relevant legislation. And this is how technology helps us to get legislators’ attention on topics that matter to us most. Feedback we receive from solar citizens on Actions they have taken tells us that staffers appear to be thorough and diligent in passing on individual concerns to their Congressman or Congresswoman.

So when you go through the Action process, you’re not just participating in an e-mail or telephone blast; you’re making a real impact on legislators whose votes may be critical in helping us all build a true Solar Nation in America.