Yeah I'm funny

One phone call = 100-1,000 angry voters.

One personal email = 10-50 voters.

One form letter = maybe 1 voter, if they even count it.

This is the economy of political pressure. Individualized contact influences 94% of congressional offices on undecided issues. Mass email campaigns? 18%. Petitions? Worthless.

But here's the secret that changes everything: State officials are sitting ducks.

State Comptrollers generally receive 5-10 constituent calls per month. State Treasurers? Many have never experienced a coordinated campaign. District Attorneys? Only hear from victims and lawyers, not voters. State Legislators? They average 20-30 contacts per week.

The magic happens at these thresholds:

10 calls in an hour = staff notices.

50 calls in a day = emergency meeting.

100 calls in a day = office shuts down to handle it.

500 calls in a week = policy change consideration.

1,000 calls = historical precedent shows this forces action.

Constituent contact increases legislator support probability by 12-20%. The Net Neutrality campaign's 1.3 million calls changed federal policy. The ACA defense campaign's 6,000 calls prevented repeal. At the state level, you need 100x fewer calls for the same impact.

this fantastic article has sample scripts for what to say about ICE in your state and city, as well as what to ask for to help your city and state fight federal over-reach where you live

I am reading Tim Curry’s 2025 memoir, Vagabond

and in it, he not only devotes a chapter to Muppet Treasure Island, but also references this very post

so, to recap

no, Tim Curry is absolutely NOT a Muppet; however

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

[sees a guy get loaded up into a big metal door and get fucked by robotic arms carrying around precise meticulously pre-written instructions]