Detailed Guide on Sending Letters to & Calling Your Senators
As I've been encouraging people to contact their senators to oppose KOSA, The Screen Act, and IODA, I've gathered that a lot of people would appreciate a comprehensive step by step guide on how to do these things. The unknown is anxiety inducing, and even if the actions are easy, it can still get overwhelming if you haven't done it before.
So instead of telling people to Google it, I just sat down and wrote an instructional guide on how to call and send letters to your senators. I even include how to gather supplies for letters and how to drop them off.
I hope someone finds this helpful and encouraging. I promise, once you start doing these things, it becomes a lot easier to do again the next time.
It goes over all these topics:
How to find your senator
What to put in a letter
The actual letters I sent to my senators
How to get supplies for a letter
How to address a letter
How to send a letter
A six step guide on calling your senator
How Can I find my Senator & Their Information?
Go to senate.gov and select “Contact Your Senators” under the “Senators” dropdown menu. Enter the state you live in and it will bring up your active senators.
NOTE: If in the future you want to write to your house representatives, you can type in your address on house.gov and it will bring up your representatives.
Their profile on the Senate website will have a “contact” button that will bring you to the senator’s website. Usually, at the bottom of the page or on a dedicated contact page they will have the addresses of all of their offices. You can select one close to you, or their office in Washington for your letter.
NOTE: If you want to email your senator as well, there are often contact forms on their websites where you can fill in your information and automatically send an email from there. No need to dig around for a specific address.
What Should My Letter Include?
Keep your letter to one page.
The goal is to get your opinion counted, not to write an entire persuasive essay.
Keep it to one issue per letter.
This helps staff better tally and record your opinion. It also means your letters take up more space and more of their resources, so if you’re really angry about multiple topics then that’s just a built in bonus.
Include your name, your city or zip code, and why you’re contacting them in the first paragraph of the letter.
Again, the goal is to have your opinion counted. Making it known that you’re their constituent and what your opinion is on the matter at hand at the start of your letter ensures it’s clearly communicated.
Identify the issue you’re writing about with the bill number and name.
Everything after is mostly fluff.
You can write about your reasoning for supporting or opposing a bill, include personal experiences that influence your view, or even request a response back. Some staffers might take note of these things, but others might not. I’m not saying it’s not worth doing, I took up the full page for my own letters, but if you don’t have anything fancy to say you don’t need to force yourself to write more because it’s not a requirement.
Letter Templates
In the next part of this post I have copy and pasted the letters I sent to my senators. I’ve left out my personal information and labeled what information should be changed to be relevant to you. They are formatted to be typed in a PDF and printed out.
I encourage you to write your own letters from scratch, as personalized letters can have more of an impact and it’s good practice for being able to independently articulate your own beliefs in a low pressure environment. While you can copy and paste my letters and send them to your own senator, I ask that you read through the letters fully and only send them if you agree with what I’ve written, as they are my own opinions and may differ from your own. Keep in mind, everything I wrote is from my perspective and is aimed at my Republican senators and what I think they’d respond best to.
SCREEN ACT
DATE
The Honorable SENATOR’S NAME
SENATOR’S OFFICE ADDRESS
Dear Senator LAST NAME,
My name is FULL NAME and I am writing to you from CITY, STATE. As your constituent, I urge you to oppose the S.737 - Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net Act.
Children absolutely deserve to be protected from harm, but vast prohibitions and heightened surveillance of the entire population is never the solution, and has been shown to be ineffective in keeping children safe. In addition to this, it is a massive security nightmare waiting to happen.
Children are clever, and have been shown to use a variety of methods to circumvent even the most modern age verification technology, and while people claim this bill protects parental rights, it ignores parental responsibility to educate their children on online safety and to personally monitor and guide their interactions online. Not only is age verification technology ineffective in keeping children out, it risks limiting access to knowledge and freedom of speech for the masses. For instance, requiring age verification across the web would lead to many companies and organizations being unable to comply with regulations, forcing them to shut down as a result and taking whatever services, resources, and knowledge they provided for the public away with them.
Those concerns are before we even get to the fact this bill is a horrific data breach in the making, as businesses have historically failed to protect consumer data time and time again. Requiring adults to expose sensitive personal data to so many businesses and organizations exponentially increases the risk of incidents like identity theft and fraud, and in the worst cases can even risk the physical safety of the individuals exposed.
So once again, I urge you to oppose the Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net Act, as it is ineffective and would do more harm than good for the public.
Sincerely,
SIGN IN PEN HERE
FULL NAME
YOUR ADDRESS
KOSA
DATE
The Honorable SENATOR’S NAME
SENATOR’S OFFICE ADDRESS
Dear Senator LAST NAME,
My name is FULL NAME and I am writing to you from CITY, STATE. As your constituent, I urge you to oppose the S.1748 - Kids Online Safety Act.
I WROTE ABOUT MY EXPERIENCE GROWING UP IN THE WILD WEST OF THE INTERNET AND HOW I UNDERSTAND HOW HARMFUL THE INTERNET CAN BE TO A CHILD. However, I believe this bill is an ineffective method of protecting children online, and it would restrict access to a wide variety of knowledge that may benefit children and adults alike, ultimately making the bill counterproductive.
Currently, the UK is enacting similar laws, and children are using a variety of methods to get around their restrictions, rendering them useless. It’s also pushing determined children to seek out less regulated sites and go deeper into the shadows of the internet where they are at an even higher risk of danger from online predators. Additionally, libraries of online information are being age restricted. Such information is not limited to depictions of sex, but has extended to censoring general knowledge along with a variety of resources that may actually help children in being able to identify the signs of abuse and seek support and safety.
I truly believe education is one of the most powerful tools we have to arm our children with the ability to combat harm they may face. So I fear if we pass KOSA in America, the same things happening in the UK will happen to us and our children, failing to protect them while simultaneously stripping valuable resources from them.
So again, I urge you to oppose the Kids Online Safety Act, as it is not in the best interest of American children or the adults who care for them.
Sincerely,
SIGN IN PEN HERE
FULL NAME
YOUR ADDRESS
IODA
DATE
The Honorable SENATOR’S NAME
SENATOR’S OFFICE ADDRESS
Dear Senator LAST NAME,
My name is FULL NAME and I am writing to you from CITY, STATE. As your constituent, I urge you to oppose the S.1671 - Interstate Obscenity Definitions Act.
As you know, we already have definitions for obscenity. While some may find them too vague, the level of interpretation it provides is vital in allowing case by case assessments, and to prevent the government from abusing its power to censor freedom of speech.
Redefining obscenity as the bill intends could lead to far more harm than good. For example, this bill could be used to silence victims of sexual abuse from sharing their stories and warning others due to the graphic nature of their contents. It could also be used to restrict access to female healthcare information including resources on breastfeeding, since some people wrongfully consider the natural and necessary act of breastfeeding a child to be sexual.
I WROTE ABOUT MY EXPERIENCE AS AN ARTIST MAKING ART ABOUT MY TRAUMA AND HOW PUBLIC REACTIONS FROM POLITICIANS AGAINST ART THEY FIND DISTASTEFUL MAKES ME BELIEVE THEY WILL USE THIS TO CENSOR ARTISTS WHO HANDLE HEAVY TOPICS THAT AREN’T CONSIDERED PALATABLE.
1984 was a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual, so please, oppose IODA. Strike down this bill and any variation of it that may rear its ugly head again in the future, as people are putting faith in you to defend our freedoms.
Sincerely,
SIGN IN PEN HERE
FULL NAME
YOUR ADDRESS
How to Send a Letter
Supplies
Something to write on and an envelope to put it in.
You can get plain, standard sized envelopes at any office supply store, but places like Walmart, Target, drug stores, and most grocery stores should sell them as well near their section with school supplies/stationary/packing supplies. These standard envelopes easily fit 8.5 x 11 paper when folded into thirds horizontally. NOTE: You can absolutely send letters on postcards or greeting cards or whatever else you have on hand.
Stamps
Standard USPS stamps are currently 78 cents each. They never expire and you can send a standard rectangular letter anywhere in the U.S. with just one of them. Stamps are typically bought in “books” which contain 20 stamps. You can get them directly at the post office, but many grocery stores and drug stores sell them as well. NOTE: There’s lots of fun stamp designs you can buy at the post office or buy online at https://store.usps.com/store/stamps. There’s ones for square or irregular shaped letters, and additional postage increments for letters weighing over an ounce.
Addressing Your Letter
Your full name and address go in the top left corner.
Including this on letters sent to senators is recommended for several reasons. It shows that you really are their constituent and allows them to send a response back to you. NOTE: There have been incidents of letters containing deadly materials, like anthrax, being sent to political officials. So while I can’t definitively confirm this, I imagine if you don’t include your return address, it’s entirely possible your letter might get thrown out as a safety precaution.
The address you’re sending it to goes in the middle of the envelope.
When writing who it’s going to, include either “Senator” or “The Honorable” before the senator’s full name.
The stamp goes on the top right of the envelope.
NOTE: Some postcards have dedicated sections for where to put addresses and the stamp.
How to Send It
If you have a mailbox with a working mailbox flag, you can put your letter into the empty mailbox and raise the flag. This will notify the mailman that the letter inside is outgoing mail, and they’ll take it and get it sent out.
If you don’t have a mailbox with a flag, most apartment mailrooms, neighborhood mailbox groups, and office buildings will have a box or slot labeled “outgoing mail”. Just slide your letter in and you’re good to go.
Some places still have USPS blue letterboxes for dropping mail. They’re also called snorkel boxes, so occasionally you’ll see that on a sign pointing you towards the box.
You can always stop by your local USPS location. They’ll either have a mailbox outside for you to drop mail into, they’ll have a mail slot inside the building usually near the PO Boxes, or if all else fails you can hand it to the person working at the post office counter.
Step-By-Step Guide to Calling Your Senators
I KNOW phone calls are scary, but I promise calling your representatives are some of the easiest and fastest phone calls you’ll make. I’ve never had one over two minutes long and every staffer has been helpful and polite, even when I’m asking for my deeply Republican senator to oppose something I know they for sure agree with.
Go to your senator’s website and find their list of offices. Usually it’s either at the bottom of the webpage or in a dedicated tab. There you’ll find phone numbers for each of their offices in your state, and their office in Washington.
When you call during office hours, an office staff member will answer the phone. They’ll say something along the lines of “This is Senator [Last Name’s] office. How may I assist you?”.
NOTE: Some offices have voicemail boxes for after hours. Not all of them have it, and you won’t get confirmation from a person that your message has been noted, so I encourage you to call during office hours. But if you leave a voicemail, still include all the information present in the next steps.
Say hello! You can either give them your full name and zip code now, or you can do it later. But make sure you give that information to them before you hang up so that your input is documented.
Tell them what bill you’re calling about and tell them you want your senator to either oppose or support the bill.
That’s it! Say your goodbyes and hang up. The call is usually less than two minutes. You can give a brief sentence or two explaining your stance, but it’s not at all necessary. This is just for them to tally support or opposition to report back to the senator.
You’re all done! Wasn’t that so much easier than you thought? Go get yourself a treat as a reward. It helps with the after phone call anxiety crash.
